


bringing the war home

by justanotherblond



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: ....or do they, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Break Up, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Captain America Big Bang 2019 | cabigbang, Denial, Depression, Developing Relationship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mechanic Bucky Barnes, Minor Character Death, Non-Chronological, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Teacher Steve Rogers, They get back together, War Veteran Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-03 03:49:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21172937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanotherblond/pseuds/justanotherblond
Summary: July 6, 2016:Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers meet at a recruitment center. The army takes Bucky. They don’t take Steve.November 18, 2017:Steve sends Bucky off to war.March 5, 2019:Bucky comes home.September 18, 2019:Steve calls off their engagement.***Two boys meet in an unusual circumstance. Two boys fall in love. One boy goes to war. That boy loses his arm while fighting. That same boy is changed completely, but the other is too stubborn to see it.Or, the non-chronological not-really-love-story of Steve and Bucky, and how war ruins them.





	1. "tired are your splendid soldiers"

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so excited to finally share my cabigbang 2019 collaboration! This story has been months in the making and through many late-night edits, different betas (thank you to my sister and best friend for stepping in), moments where I hated this story with a passion then liked it again, and just plain old writers' block, it's finally here! 
> 
> I'd like to give a big thank you to my artist Elia, who is not on ao3 but please check out his [instagram](https://www.instagram.com/elia.russo97/)! 
> 
> I hope you all enjoy! Part two will be posted next Friday.
> 
> **also any comment made about Shelbyville, Indiana or Greta Van Fleet is purely fictional. They've been tweaked to fit this story. If anyone from Shelbyville or Greta Van Fleet reads this, I apologize sincerely. I'm sure you all are lovely.**

[](https://imgur.com/XGcNk2E)

**March 5, 2019**

_Welcome home._

What happens when war kills your honey and leaves you with the body?

That’s the question that spins like a tilt-a-whirl in Steve’s mind while he watches Bucky trudge through the airport terminal. 

Bucky. The same Bucky who Steve sent off over a year ago. The one who Steve had been longing for, yearning for, counting down the days for. The Bucky who used to laugh with his whole body and kiss Steve’s cheek throughout the day just to remind him that he loved him.

Bucky, whose eyes are now mechanical and his shoulders are curved forward because he carries a weight heavier than just his pack.

It’s a cold day with spring just approaching. Damp. The kind of cold that’s thick and sharp but has no breeze.

Bucky sports a fresh haircut and a pressed military uniform. A Purple Heart is pinned to his lapel. His left sleeve is folded thrice and held together with a sanitized safety pin.

For now, it’s not real. For now, Steve can’t see that his boyfriend's arm was blown off while most of Bucky’s troop was killed.

Of course, Steve knows it happened. They called him when it did.

Landmine. No one saw it. Some guy named Wilson — a man who Bucky mentioned in letters and rare Skype calls — sure as hell didn’t. He was the one who smashed it with his boot and burst into a thousand pieces.

Bucky was the lucky one. It was only his arm that was taken away after it was ripped up by shrapnel. They wouldn’t let Steve see him, not until he got patched up and shipped back home. It’s not like Steve could gain access to a US military base in Syria or the hospital in Germany they shipped Bucky off to.

Even now when it’s Steve’s first time seeing Bucky in over a year, he can’t bring himself to smile. Steve watches Bucky approach with a rock in his chest. It hits his sternum with a sharp _thump thump_. He’d walk over to him but his feet feel like lead bricks.

The second Bucky makes it to Steve, he drops his bag and collapses in Steve’s arms. His body is dead weight.

Steve presses his palms against Bucky’s cold face. It seemed impossible that one could age so much in one year. But here he is, all that careless joy scrubbed from his eyes and ripped from his lips. His eyes are empty. His lips are chapped. Where there was once stubble that went down his chin, over his lips, and across his cheeks is now smooth and frigid flesh. The only thing separating his skin from marble is its softness, how it gives under Steve’s fingers.

Steve wants to ask Bucky how he’s been. Did he miss him? When was the last he’d eaten? What’s it like to walk through life like you hadn’t just ripped it away from countless civilians on another land for a country that doesn’t love you?

Every word is locked in Steve’s throat. It feels raw like he’s been screaming but he hasn’t spoken a word all day. He smiles; a small, pathetic thing, and mouths, “Hey.”

Bucky tightens his arm, his one arm, around Steve’s torso and ducks his head to Steve’s neck.

“Hey yourself,” he whispers back.

Together they breathe. Together they feel the first wave of peace since Steve sent Bucky off to war all those months ago.

It’s bound to be short-lived. The quiet is always sweetest in moments like these; the moments where something bitter is just around the corner.

“I can’t play the drums anymore,” Bucky mutters wetly into the skin of Steve’s neck. His voice cracks like he’s starting puberty all over again, but it’s resigned, “Can’t play the drums with one arm.”

Steve gives a shaky exhale and laces his boney fingers over the nape of Bucky’s neck where his dark and dry hair used to lay. He wants to say that it’s alright, but he can’t. 

It isn’t alright. It won’t be alright. Bucky’s missing an arm.

They breathe for a beat longer. Then gently, like holding a broken bird wing, Steve nudges Bucky back and grasps his hand to lead him to the taxi.

***

**July 18, 2016**

_They meet._

The air was musty, stale, and too fucking hot. It made sweat bead and slip down Bucky’s top lip, the undersides of his arms, and the back of his neck. His thick black Greta Van Fleet shirt he got for free at their concert last May was completely soaked.

It was the concert where his band was supposed to decide whether or not they wanted to tour with them. Natasha insisted that this was their last option, that if they didn’t go with this band, they’d never leave New York.

It was also the one where Bucky got a little too hammered because he made out with maybe the drummer, maybe the bassist? That was before Clint dragged him out of their dressing room. Natasha bitched him out in the car because he blew it yet again.

“I blew something,” Bucky giggled through a whiskey-filled haze before Natasha smacked him upside the head.

They didn’t get asked to tour with Greta Van Fleet. Something about conflicting schedules or not having the right sound. Clint was about ready to quit. Natasha shrugged it off but her expression hardened. Bucky just laughed and picked up more shifts at the car shop.

In the sweltering recruitment center, Bucky blew a steady breath through pursed lips and placed his pencil on his enlistment forms so he could put up his hair. It didn’t cool him much, but at least his hair wasn’t damp from the sweat all over his neck.

There wasn’t much of a crowd that day, not that there was ever much of one. There were only guys like Bucky; broke, proud men who itched to get out of the country.

Bucky had been there for an hour and barely made a dent in his forms, which was fine. There were only two recruiters and both were talking to other prospects, so it wasn’t like Bucky needed to rush.

Besides, it wasn’t exactly easy giving people information about himself that he didn’t know. His mom was probably the only one who knew it, but she was in Indiana and it would take a hell of a lot more than a phone call to get it from her. 

It would probably take some groveling. A lot of groveling. Maybe even a promise of conversion therapy.

No. No, Ma wasn’t cruel. She just wished her son the best and the best was only possible if he was different.

Bucky sighed again and picked up the pencil, chewing the eraser until rubbery pink bits littered his tongue. It was a bad habit, but he gnawed his nails to the nub that morning.

He filled out the first part already because it was the easiest. He didn’t need his mom for his name, birthdate and home address. But he didn’t know a bit about his blood type, possible allergies to medicine or what the hell it meant by “home of record”. Jesus, who the hell was he supposed to put as his emergency contact?

A stream of sweat dripped into his eye, which felt as bad as getting a piece of dirt or an eyelash caught in it.

Bucky groaned and rubbed at it with the heel of his hand.

Would it kill them to put on the damn AC? Or was the US government too stingy to make even its potential military personnel comfortable?

But then, as if God heard his internal cries and decreed it, a burst of cool air flooded the stuffy room. Bucky dropped his hand and opened his eyes towards the door, expecting to see an angel.

No angel came into the recruitment center that day. Instead, a scrawny, wisp of a thing rushed inside like a tidal wave. He had to be half a foot shorter and sixty pounds lighter than the smallest man there, but his nose was tilted up and his eyebrows were set as if he belonged.

Bucky whistled lowly as the guy stormed past. He tipped back in his chair and let his eyes roam down the scrawny guy’s Guns N’ Roses tank-top to his paint-stained jeans. 

He carried a red backpack with more pins than fabric. Bucky’s favorites were a fluorescent green one that told everyone to “mind their business” and a decent sized pride pin.

He marched right up to the front desk. There sat a grouchy man who simply raised an eyebrow.

“Rogers,” the old man droned, fiddling with the side of his glasses’ frames, “back so soon?”

The guy, Rogers, nodded stiffly, “Passed the ASVAB, sir. And I got the updated physical from my doctor.”

Bucky’s eyebrows quirked up at the sound of Rogers’ husky voice. It was deeper than he’d imagined. Rounder, like it belonged in the mouth of someone much larger. 

The old man sighed and raised his hand, grumbling, “Let’s see it then.”

Rogers dug through his stained jeans’ pocket and fished out a crinkled, obviously forged doctor’s note. It was written on a large index card with a small coffee stain on the top corner. It was transcribed in poor cursive and the signature was too neat. Still, his expression was smug when he passed it to the old grouch.

The Grouch rolled his eyes but took the note regardless. He opened a metal drawer attached to his desk and pulled out a stuffed file folder with previously rejected forms. He grabbed a thin stack of papers that rested at the top of the folder and passed them to Rogers.

“You wanna look over your forms? Make any changes?” the Grouch grumbled, voice laced with sarcasm. 

Rogers took them with pride and departed from the front desk with a, “Thank you, sir.”

The Grouch grunted and waved his hand to shoo Rogers away as if he were a fly.

Rogers’ chest was still puffed out and his head high as he turned to search for a vacant seat.

There was plenty available, but he walked right up to Bucky.

“This taken?” he asked, waving to the seat beside Bucky.

Bucky’s eyes went wide. He glanced at the seat that held his torn beyond repair backpack and tangled black headphones. He quickly pushed them on the floor in front of him and waved back to the now-empty seat. 

“All yours,” Bucky claimed.

Rogers plopped down, dropping his backpack in front of him. He rested the papers on his knees while he dug through the front pouch of his backpack to pull out a pen.

Instead of going back to his own paperwork, like he should have been doing this whole time, Bucky peered over Rogers’ shoulder to watch as he filled out the top of his form. Bucky’s mom would have smacked him for snooping. He wasn’t exactly proud of this behavior, but he needed to have a name to call the guy beside Rogers and it didn’t feel like the time to ask yet or anything and —

Oh. His name was Steve.

Even though Bucky got Steve’s name, he couldn’t bring himself to look away when Steve moved down to the checkboxes for different ailments. 

Arthritis? _Yes._

Heart trouble? _Yes._

Scoliosis? _Yes._

Steve started furiously scribbling out the boxes checked yes and confidently checking no instead.

Bucky’s eyes grew so wide that the whites were brighter than the rest. It was no wonder the kid got turned away before. The United States would rather take a healthy boy, freshly eighteen with his whole life ahead of him, to die on the battlefield than someone half-dead already.

Steve’s pencil stopped suddenly and at first Bucky thought Steve was deciding whether or not he had a family history of heart disease, until an exaggerated cough grabbed Bucky’s attention.

Bucky looked over at Steve’s face, which was glaring right back at Bucky. When Steve noticed he had Bucky’s attention, he pointedly looked down at Bucky’s forms.

“James Buchanan?” Steve scoffed, “Do your parents hate you?”

“Yeah,” Bucky chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck only to grimace when he got sweat all over his palm, “something like that.”

Steve hummed like he was suddenly uninterested and went back to scribbling out boxes on his papers.

“I go by Bucky, though.” Bucky cut in before Steve could fully turn his attention away.

It worked. Steve turned fully towards Bucky with an incredulous look on his face. 

“Bucky?” Steve spat like he didn’t believe him.

Bucky shrugged and wiped his slick palms on his jeans, “Yeah, you know, like Buchanan...Buck...Bucky?”

Steve slowly blinked. Only once. And Bucky kept wiping his hands.

Could it get anymore goddamn hot in this place?

But then Steve smiled. “Alright,” he replied, “I get it. It’s cute.”

Bucky swallowed nothing down his now dry throat, but he tilted back in his chair like he was the confident asshole everyone seemed to think he was.

Steve turned back to his papers and mumbled loud enough for Bucky to hear, “Your shirt could use some work.”

Bucky jolted slightly, taken aback before he glanced down at his shirt and asked, “What’s wrong with it?”

Steve scoffed, checking off another box and moving to the next section, “Greta Van Fleet is a Led Zeppelin rip off and everyone knows it.”

“I think they’re okay,” Bucky defended lightly because he didn’t care much about them and sure, they did sound a bit like Zeppelin, “we — I’m in this band, a small one — we were gonna open for them but the timing didn’t work. But I got to see them last May and they’re all pretty hot if that’s any consolation. Made out with at least one of them.”

Steve startled and twisted towards Bucky with eyes so wide they looked they might pop.

Bucky laughed too loud. The Grouch made a point to shush them, pressing his finger to his pursed lips.

Bucky quieted down and mumbled to Steve, “Yeah, I know. It shocked me too when I first figured it out. I like your pride pin.”

“With a name like James Buchanan, I should’ve known,” Steve whispered back with a smirk. 

He went back to his papers and finished filling them out before Bucky got the joke. 

Steve paused before he stood up to take his papers to the front. He turned to Bucky to say, “You know, the lead singer isn’t much to look at, but the others ain’t bad. I’ve always had a thing for guys with long hair.”

He gave a pointed look to Bucky’s bun knotted above his neck. 

Bucky had no time to respond before Steve marched right up to the front with the same confidence he had while walking in.

He dropped the papers right in front of the Grouch and crossed his arms. He waited with his chin held high as the old man glanced at the first page.

The exchange lasted ten seconds. When those seconds were up, the Grouch shook his head and pushed Steve’s papers into the wire bin beside the desk.

“What the hell?” Steve snapped, looking from the waste bin to the Grouch in furious disbelief, “Why’d you do that?”

“We’ve been over this a thousand times, Rogers. You aren’t eligible,” The old man explained like the words left his mouth so often they were getting dry, “you’re ineligible on arthritis alone. Just because you scribbled out your ailments and got a fake doctor’s note, doesn’t mean you don’t have them.”

Steve’s shoulders hunched like a wet cat as he argued, “It wasn’t fake — ”

The Grouch cut him off with a glare. Steve deflated like a whining balloon, slowly and not all the way.

“Fine,” He said harshly as he turned on his heel and marched back to his seat.

There was a tiny crinkle between his eyebrows that would’ve been cute if he wasn’t so pissed. His fists were bunched by his sides and his eyes were on fire.

He plopped down and stuffed his pen back into his backpack. He zipped it up so harshly that the zipper caught on the fabric of the bag a few times before he roughly tugged it free.

Bucky exhaled and rolled his papers into his right hand. Not like they couldn’t be filled out at home. That way he could call his doctor or something to get all the information he didn’t know. He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. 

Then, he offered a hand out to Steve and asked, “You wanna get out of here?”

At first, Steve looked at the outstretched hand like a challenge. His lip almost curled and his shoulders rounded, but he settled down as soon as he glanced up and saw the grin on Bucky’s face.

Then, Steve forced a nonchalant shrug and took Bucky’s hand.

“It stinks in here anyway,” Steve grumbled, casting a glare towards the Grouch.

Bucky gave a toothy grin even though Steve’s palm was clammy. He pulled Steve up to his feet and led him to the entrance. He held open the door for Steve before they walked out into the bright, steamy New York City, where heat rose from the asphalt until it burnt your face.

There was a cute little diner across the street. Bucky frequented it enough with Clint and Nat to know that their food was cheap, quick and decent. That, and they had AC.

The door chimed when it opened. The tables were all vacant except two; one sat a man in a wrinkled business suit with a coffee stain on the collar and another held two summer college students with an array of textbooks, highlighters, and broken pencil lead.

Steve and Bucky slid into a booth near the front, their backs sticking to the plastic-covered seats. They picked up their menus and read them in silence.

Bucky glanced up once, twice, three times, ignoring the midday specials in favor of watching Steve.

He was still a little red, whether from the two seconds they were outside or leftover anger from the recruitment office. His eyebrows were pushed down and between them were three deep lines.

Bucky cleared his throat. Steve looked up sharply, eyes still dangerously dark.

“So, uh,” Bucky started and then swallowed, “that happened before?”

Steve huffed and said, “Yeah, that’s happened before. A lot, actually, if you didn’t notice.” 

Before Bucky could think of a response, Steve continued with, “Why are you enlisting anyway? Garageband groupie doesn’t exactly scream military material.”

Bucky sputtered, nearly dropping his menu when he shot back with, “What and you do?”

Steve shrugged. “My dad was in the army. Figured the look might be genetic.” He said it with a flat inflection, but when he glanced up there was a glint in his eyes.

“That’s why you wanna join?” Bucky asked, “Or do you just have nothing better to do?”

“I have stuff to do,” Steve muttered, nose wrinkling in offense, “I mean, I have a job. I teach art at Brier Creek; the elementary school on Sitwell? So it’s not like I don’t get benefits or anything. Just wanna fight for our country is all.”

Bucky’s face twisted dubiously.

Steve’s eyes narrowed as he spat, “Is that a crime?”

Bucky relaxed his face before he shook his head, “It isn’t. You just seem more like someone with a point to prove.”

Steve’s eyes slanted more, becoming no bigger than paper cuts. He quirked his chin when he asked, “Then why do you wanna join?”

Bucky didn’t have a good answer. He wished he could say he loved their country. He wanted to believe that fighting for it was the right thing to do. In all honesty, there just wasn’t much left for him to do.

Bucky exhaled through his nose and shrugged, “Don’t really have much of a choice. Not a lot of options for guys with no degree.”

He didn’t feel like elaborating. Not on why he couldn’t afford college or how he was blowing through every paycheck the garage paid him on food and electricity or how he always dreamt of seeing the world anyway so it didn’t make much of a difference if there would be a gun strapped to his back. A story like that was too drab for a meeting like this. That and Bucky had that sharp twinge at the bottom of his belly that told him how he wanted it to end.

Bucky was anything but against loveless hookups with guys that he barely exchanged names with. And if Steve said no, then he said no and that’s that. Bucky could find someone else. 

“You know,” Bucky hummed, closing his menu and sliding it to the back of the table, “if you’re still pissed, I can help you get your anger out somewhere else.”

Steve lifted an eyebrow, calmly setting his menu down and folding his hands on top of it. He cleared his throat thrice. 

“Would that somewhere be your apartment?” he asked. 

Bucky grinned coyly. His eyebrows lifted suggestively until Steve laughed, a raspy thing, and pushed his way out of the booth.

He blocked Bucky’s way for a moment, pressing one palm flat on the table and the other on the back of Bucky’s seat; trapping him like some kind of prey. Steve leaned down, mouth close enough that his hot breath tickled the stray hairs above Bucky’s ear.

“You gonna make it worth my while?” Steve purred. 

Bucky tilted back and eyed Steve up and down very, very slowly. His lips pulled back into a Cheshire grin as he promised, “Hon, I’ll make you forget the whole goddamn day.”

Steve grinned and pushed himself away, letting Bucky slip out so the two of them could rush out of the diner down the six blocks to Bucky’s place.

And by God, Bucky was a man of his word.

***

**Some time ago…**

_in Shelbyville, Indiana_

It’s important to note that Bucky didn’t have a bad childhood. It just wasn’t very good, either.

His pops, George Barnes, wasn’t mean or a drunk. He rarely got sour and only yelled when he was pissed, but he never wanted kids. He often forgot things like birthdays and graduations.

Bucky’s ma Winnifred was sweeter. She had a smile that she saved for her kids. She rubbed their backs when they couldn’t sleep and sang to them as she made stew. She spent a lot more time with Bucky’s baby sister Becca, but Bucky never felt neglected because she made sure to say that she loved him at least once a day. She traced a little cross on his forehead with her thumb every night to bless his dreams.

The Barnes owned a shitty corn plantation in a little farming town in the middle of Indiana. They had dirt, one run-down shack of a house, two kids, and about eighty rows of corn stalks to their name.

Shelbyville was a small town. It was the kind of town where everyone knew everyone and their entire family tree. Everyone knew where everyone lived, where everyone worked. They knew what type of crops your family planted and how much money you made after the last harvest.

In that town, everyone’s minds were so closed that you couldn’t wedge a nickel through. They preached a fabricated word of God and damned anyone who they deemed unholy.

So when Bucky found himself at twelve years old with a strong and unnatural fascination with Heath Ledger after watching _Ten Things I Hate About You_, he knew he was gonna have to keep a terrible secret. He felt it in the bottom of his stomach, a gnawing feeling that was tight with either fear or guilt or maybe something else.

He knew that there was something wrong with him. Something that he couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried. So he locked it away and pushed it down, down, down so he wouldn’t think about it anymore. 

But that never lasts very long.

By middle school, he had a collection of stolen _Playgirls_ under his bed. By his junior year, he shared fleeting grabs and loveless kisses behind an abandoned house in a dirt lot deep into town. It was that scrawny boy from his Spanish class or the chess club softie from algebra. They wouldn’t speak of it come Monday and when they caught eyes, their faces would turn red and they’d turn away quicker than a spooked cat.

If anyone were to find out the truth, anyone at all, the whole town would know soon after and Bucky would be chased to the hills before nightfall.

So he became a little desperate to find a way out.

**

Bucky’s best friend for as long as he could remember was his neighbor Clint; a spazz who ran around the playground screaming lines from _Terminator_. His hair was unkempt and he always had a bandaid taped across his nose. Most people in town knew him as the deaf kid who came from a bad family, but to Bucky, he was just Clint.

Mr. Barton, a lanky ex-marine with a beer gut and no hair, drank between their dried-up crops and dirt patches. Sometimes Mrs. Barton, a woman too frail for her age, would sit on their porch and cry. They were loud; lots of yelling and screaming and glass breaking and doors slamming came from that house.

Bucky wasn’t envious of Clint’s family, but Clint had a guitar. He said he could feel the vibrations of the strings better than he could hear them. Bucky always thought it was the most mesmerizing sound in the world, so he begged his dad to get him a guitar, too.

Pops did him one better. He got him a second-hand drum kit for his eleventh birthday.

“I’m making up for last year,” he explained when Bucky pulled the old sheet off the drum kit, “still feel bad we couldn’t get you anything.”

Pops cackled when Bucky snatched the drumsticks from his hand and started banging on those poor drums. Ma huffed in the kitchen and pressed her hands over her ears.

But Pops and Ma both got tired of it quickly because Bucky soon found dish towels stuck under the batter heads.

Upon this discovery, Bucky ran through their cornfield maze, between the high stalks and right up to where his dad was weeding. 

Bucky crossed his arms and tried to catch his breath as he whined, “You guys did something to my drums and now they’re not working.”

Pops just laughed and said, “You know, your ma might be a little nicer if you found a place to play that wouldn’t shake the walls.”

The next day, Bucky dragged that drum kit onto the little slab of concrete in their backyard, right beside Pops’ smaller tools and under a metal awning. He made sure all the windows and doors were closed before he started playing.

This is when Clint, perched on top of the fence that separated their properties, suggested that they start a band.

“We’ll be like the next Led Zeppelin!” Clint claimed, grinning so wide the sun reflected off his teeth.

“Who knows?” Bucky grinned back, “Maybe we’ll get so famous we’ll tour the world together.”

One day, Bucky would see the world. Not all of it, not with Clint, and not for playing the drums, but this was where Bucky made his first plan for leaving Shelbyville. 

***

A week into their freshman year, Clint pounded on Bucky’s front door. He was panting something awful and leaning on the door hinge when Bucky opened it. Blood pooled from his top lip to his chin and a forming purple bruise laid beneath it. Mrs. Barton was crying next door.

Bucky looked at him with eyes the size of ceramic coasters. 

Clint responded with a bloody grin and asked, “You wanna come up with a name?”

They set up in Bucky’s room after he gave Clint a handful of ice wrapped in a dish towel to hold over his lip until the bleeding stopped.

They sat cross-legged on the floor beside Bucky’s twin bed. Clothes were pushed to the corners of the room and old carpet scratched their legs. Between them was Bucky’s school binder with a single sheet of paper where countless band names had been scratched out.

“You ever gonna let me call the cops?” Bucky asked, twirling a pencil between two fingers.

“Nope,” Clint responded, “what do you think about Hawkeye?”

“It fucking sucks,” Bucky snorted, “White Wolf sounds better.”

“Like shit it does!” Clint retorted, throwing his hands up so fast his pen flew out of his grasp and rolled under Bucky’s bed. He rolled his eyes and went on his stomach to dig for it.

Only that’s where Bucky kept—

“Wait—!” Bucky started, reaching to grab Clint’s shirt to pull him back, but it was too late. Clint’s back tensed up and Bucky froze. 

His heart and lungs and time all stopped.

His throat was closing up. His heart was a bomb. His friend was gonna out him.

Clint slowly pushed himself out from under the bed and sat up on his knees with two copies of _Playgirl_ Bucky stole from the corner store in his hands.

Clint stared at them for a while, mouth opened and eyes glassy and wide like he was living through a weird dream.

Bucky’s face looked the same. His arm was still outstretched. He wished he could grab time and push it back. 

Why the fuck did he store those under his bed anyway? What the hell was he thinking?

It was a while where they couldn’t even hear their breathing. A click from Bucky’s Mickey Mouse alarm clock sounded like a gunshot through the humid fall air clogging his room. Through the silence. Through the day he wished he could start over so he could clean his room and throw that stuff out before Clint came and—

“You can hate me,” Bucky whispered when the words finally made it off his tongue, “You can hate me just...just don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” Clint muttered, words hollow. He was still looking at the magazine. Eventually, he took a deep breath and tossed them back under Bucky’s bed. He looked into Bucky’s eyes.

“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” He repeated, voice firmer, “And I can’t hate you. You’re the only one who doesn’t hate me,” He cleared his throat, scooched back to the paper and said, “We can’t be White Wolf, man. That name fucking sucks.”

And just like that, it was their secret.

**

The first time Bucky thought of war was a week after Clint ran away.

It was nearly time to harvest. Three months before graduation. Becca was playing Barbies on the porch while Bucky raked and plucked and tended to the corn. He wiped his forehead on his shirt to sop up his sweat and kept raking.

“Hey Barnes, guess what!” Clint called from his perch on the fence, “I’m going to New York!”

Bucky laughed, sticking his rake in the dirt for a moment to call back, “Oh yeah? How you gonna manage that?”

Clint just grinned coyly and said, “Natasha. She’s in a band.”

He told Bucky for nearly a year about this girl he met online; some chick from Russia who moved to the states as a kid. He met her around the same time Bucky started going with boys to the shack at the far edge of town to fool around. 

Clint talked about how he and Natasha were made for each other; how they were the same age, how they both hated their parents and how her voice was as soothing as warm honey on a sore throat. He even showed Bucky a picture, but Bucky had to bite his tongue to keep himself from making any comment about catfishing.

Bucky just cackled and snarked, “Oh sure. She’s from Canada too, right?”

Clint guffawed like an old man.

“Just you wait, Barnes,” he grinned, “You’re gonna miss the shit out of me when you realize I’m gone.”

The next week when Bucky was walking Becca back home, Mr. Barton was drinking on his front porch. Some of Clint’s clothes were in the garbage bin at the edge of their property. 

“You got any idea where he went, boy?” Mr. Barton asked, voice sharp and bitter.

And though Bucky’s stomach froze over and his tongue turned to cotton because _holy shit Clint actually did it_, he managed to shake his head and lie, “No, sir. I haven’t seen him since Tuesday.”

“I thought he said he was—” Becca started before Bucky nudged her with his elbow. When she started to cry, looking up at him with big, wet eyes, he cursed.

“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry. I’ll get you candy if you stop. You just can’t say anything,” he hissed as he pulled her to their house where Mr. Barton couldn’t hear them anymore.

The next morning after Bucky spent the night coming to terms that Clint just up and left without a goodbye, his mom had him check the mail.

There wasn’t anything but expired coupons and their water bill, except a tiny scrap of paper, ripped out of a textbook covered in Clint’s chicken scratch.

_You’re a fucking moron if you think about staying there. You’re gonna get yourself killed one of these days. People in New York don’t care. If you change your mind about leaving, you’ll know where to find me._

Beneath it was a phone number with an area code Bucky didn’t recognize. He folded the paper up and shoved it in his pocket. He carried it with him every day just in case.

This was an out. He could go. He could get up and kiss this goddamn town and their corn goodbye. He’d never have to know a hungry night again. Or pick blisters formed from shovels and drumsticks off of the palm of his hand so they didn’t get in the way of planting. He wouldn’t have to steal one more fruit or wipe one more snotty nose or hide behind that rat-infested, smelly, condemned little shack.

New York had all kinds of people like him. People in bands, too. He could be happy in New York.

The second he thought of picking up the phone and calling Clint, he could only see Becca’s face when she knew that he was gone. He could hear his mother crying. There wasn’t a chance they’d speak to him if he abandoned ship like that. 

No. No there had to be another way.

A recruitment booth was always set up beside the school entrance. The army trapped kids in that town like flies for decades. Bucky was going to walk past it like he always had until a new, bright banner draped across the front of their table caught his eye.

**“Ask us how we’ll pay for your college!”**

He stood there, students bumping his shoulders as he stood in their way and twisted a strap of his backpack.

College. He could do a lot with college. He didn’t need to be anything big like a doctor or a lawyer. Being a teacher would help just fine. Even if he moved somewhere far enough away that he could be himself, he’d see Ma and Becca on the weekends. He’d set a good example for his sister. And what was some time overseas anyway?

He put on a smile, the sweet kind he used on the girls but hurt his stomach, and stepped forward.

“You got any more pamphlets?”

***

Ma was proud. Bucky would be the first of their family to get any sort of degree. He’d be the first one out since their family took root in that town.

Pops didn’t seem to care much. He was reluctant at first, but eventually agreed and said he’d just ask the neighbor boys to help on the farm.

“‘Least you’ll be doing something,” he grumbled when Bucky showed him the pamphlet, “I was starting to worry that you were gonna run off and try that band thing for real.”

Everything was going just fine. He was set to graduate come spring and he had a stack of enlistment forms he was slowly working through.

That was until Becca, the little sneak, followed him after school one day to try and scare him. All she ended up doing was seeing her brother and Jackson Bennett, this wispy thing in the chess club, macking behind the shack. Bucky didn’t notice her staring in slack-jawed horror until she screamed so loud that Bucky nearly bit poor Jack’s lip off.

“What are you doing?!” she shrieked. She and Bucky stared at each other in identical wide-eyed terror. No one spoke.

She ran off before Bucky could say anything.

“She won’t say anything will she?” Jackson wheezed, but Bucky shoved him away and sprinted after her, leaving poor Jackson to panic out there on his own.

Becca was a quick little thing. She made it to their house before him.

Bucky ran and ran until he shoved open the door to get inside. His lips felt like ice picks. His heart was dead weight. He couldn’t remember how to breathe.

“Quit horsing around, you two,” Ma scolded lightly from the kitchen.

“Bucky was kissing a boy!” Becca yelled. Her shrill tattling voice rattled off the walls.

Ma jolted and looked up from her soup. She tilted her head and laughed a little, “He what?”

“That ain’t funny, Rebecca,” Pops grumbled at the kitchen table, newspaper crinkled in his hands, “No son of mine goes around kissing boys.”

“But he did!” Becca insisted and stomped her foot, “I saw him! He kissed Jackson from our church behind the haunted house!”

Bucky didn’t say a word. He couldn’t. His breathing must have changed a little or maybe his eyes widened just so, but there was something he did that gave him away.

Pops lowered his paper and stared down his son. His son refused to stare back.

“What in the hell is wrong with you?” Pops seethed.

The words dried up in Bucky’s mouth and they tasted like vomit. He couldn’t get them out before he twisted and ran back out the door into the twilight where cows mooed and chickens went to sleep.

He ran and ran and ran until his legs started to burn. Until he came across the blue payphone outside of the town’s only gas station. He had his wallet in his back right pocket with the note tucked behind his library card. He put three quarters into the slot.

His fingers shook as he dialed the number and he pressed the phone too hard against his ear. It only rang once.

“Who’s this?” A female’s sharp voice cut through the line without a greeting. There was a vague accent, one that was almost scrubbed completely from her tongue but some remnants were left behind.

“Hey um,” Bucky wiped his eyes on his sleeves and sniffed, “Clint Barton gave me this number. Is this Natasha?”

It was quiet for a while. So quiet Bucky thought Clint maybe left some fake number as a joke.

“Ah, Bucky,” Natasha drawled a beat late, “yes, Clint’s told me plenty about you.”

“Yeah, uh—”

“You decided to come out after all?” she asked. Bucky could almost hear her smiling as his mouth ran dry. 

“To New York, of course.” she finished 

“Kind of?” Bucky rubbed the back of his neck and looked out the front of the booth, “Look, I don’t really have anywhere else to go and I don’t have any money. But if I could talk to Clint—”

“Don’t worry about money,” she laughed, too light to be real. Bucky could hear clicking across the line, “what email can I send the ticket to? I’ll have Clint pick you up from JFK when you get here.”

It was just that easy. Clint explained later that Natasha came from a privately important family in Russia. She had a lot of money. A new stack would be found in her mailbox twice a month.

It was dark when he started back home. Chickens clucked across the dirt-filled fields and the stars were so bright, Bucky could practically see them all.

He was only home for an hour to pack up all the stuff he needed. Clothes, drum sticks, money, two pictures, and his enlistment forms that laid on his desk.

Ma sat at the table with wet eyes when he left. Her hands fisted their yellowing table cloth. Her knick-knacks that cluttered the counters and shelves seemed to laugh at him. Pops and Becca were nowhere to be found.

In the end, no one said goodbye. His not good, not bad childhood ended in silence.

***

**March 5th - March 29, 2019**

_he came home different_

There’s half-made kidney bean soup left cold on the stove.

Steve wanted to make it special. It’s Buck’s favorite out of the cheap meals they’re left to pick through at the end of the month when money is especially tight.

This day has been circled on the calendar for weeks. Steve picked out his best outfit, Bucky’s favorite, with jeans too tight and a floral button-up Bucky bought him at some boutique during their first, and only, pride together. He combed his hair just right, even added gel.

But in his scramble to make it to the airport because he anxiously waited until the last minute to do absolutely everything, his efforts fell flat. His shirt’s wrinkled, his hair is a mess, the soup has most of its ingredients spread across the counter.

Steve is in a dazed state in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the half-made soup. Bucky’s slack-faced on the couch, staring at the wall. He hadn’t said anything during the ride home. He’s still wearing his uniform with the left sleeve folded thrice. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with Steve when he asked if he wanted to change.

“You hungry?” Steve asks the soup.

He can only see a handful of kidney beans. Had he forgotten to put them all in? Were they stuck to the bottom? Or sprinkled around the counter like everything else?

He hasn’t gotten a response from the corpse on the couch.

“Buck?” He calls again. His voice sounds far away in his ear. Hollow, almost.

There was a time when Bucky would saunter into the kitchen, wrap his warm arms around Steve’s stomach, kiss his cheek and say, _“Smells good, honey.”_

It was constant. Even if Steve was stirring up bland ramen noodles or watered down Campbell's because they were that broke, Bucky would always say it.

But Steve hasn’t felt those warm arms in nearly a year and he’s gotten used to the cold nights where silence reverberated off the walls. And Bucky’s right here, living and breathing, and it’s still cold. One of those arms was blown off anyway so it’s not like it can ever be the same.

God, Steve’s just a piece of shit for thinking that, isn’t he?

“Bucky?” Steve calls again, harsher this time, and turns around.

“Huh?” Bucky answers, but it’s hollow, too. He’s still staring at the wall but its a wall with nothing on it.

“You hungry?” Steve asks and it almost sounds angry.

“Yeah,” Bucky sighs, shifting a little. He’s still not looking at Steve, “sure, honey.”

Steve turns to the counter covered in the mess and starts throwing in ingredients. Hacked up potatoes, pieces of a celery stick, a can of tomatoes he forgot to drain. He decides to skip the onions because he’d have to take out a whole new pan to fry them and they aren’t even chopped yet.

He almost wishes he started something like pasta instead. They have jarred sauce, and dumping pasta in a pot of boiling water doesn’t take this much effort. The soup almost looks inedible with chunks of potatoes and celery and carrots just floating around in the lukewarm broth.

Maybe an hour later, he has the soup dished out in throw-away plastic bowls he’d wash after they finish.

A fuller bowl rests in front of Bucky’s chair, the plastic one closer to the front door, while Steve’s is filled halfway and waits by their good chair, the wooden one with a woven back. Bucky always insisted on Steve sitting there because he deserved the best.

It takes a while to get Bucky’s attention again and Steve can feel a nerve about to pop, but it’s overcome by the chiding voice of his mother always in the back of his head going, _“Be nice, Steven Grant. You always catch more flies with honey, but your face is looking a lot like vinegar.”_

When they’re both seated, Steve starts with, “Sorry it ain’t as good as it normally is.”

Bucky just grunts. He’s staring at his soup, not eating it, and stirring it around with his spoon.

Steve scowls at his bowl as he spoons another mouthful. Then, it’s quiet for a while.

“Thought we could call Natasha tomorrow. She hasn’t stopped talking about you since you shipped off. Don’t think I ever heard her talk that much,” Steve offers, breaking the silence.

Bucky doesn’t say anything this time. He hasn’t even taken one bite of his goddamn soup that Steve didn’t necessarily slave over, but he made it even though he really didn’t want to.

“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to eat it,” Steve snaps, finally cracking but he feels like crap the second he does it because Bucky’s head snaps up like he was shot.

Steve ducks his head and closes his eyes, taking one deep breath through his nose. Tonight wasn’t supposed to go like this. He was supposed to be making love and laughing with his best guy who he mourned for months even though he was still alive, but now he feels like shit and his stomach hurts.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Bucky whispers, broken and small and suddenly Steve feels like crying, “I just...I can’t right now.”

Steve wants to shrivel up, become so small and obsolete no one could see him, especially not Bucky. He can’t find it in him to open his eyes.

Bucky went to hell and lost an arm for it and here Steve is feeling bitter because Bucky isn’t eating his goddamn soup.

This isn’t how tonight was supposed to go.

Steve finally fights his eyes open and Bucky’s looking back down at his soup, sniffling and blinking. A sob cracks through his lips before Steve can say anything. Bucky ducks his face into his hand and cries louder. 

“Honey, no,” Steve pleads, desperate and guilty as he pushes away from his seat and rushes towards Bucky. He kneels just in time for Bucky to fall into him. He grips the back of Steve’s shirt with his only hand and holds tight.

Steve holds Bucky’s head to his chest and his shirt sops up most of his tears. He presses a kiss into Bucky’s hair and squeezes his eyes shut again.

“We’re gonna be alright,” he whispers like a prayer. He kisses his head again, “we’re gonna be fine.”

**

But dinners keep up like that. 

Steve boils whatever they have in the fridge. Bucky won’t eat it. Bucky barely gets out of bed. He makes himself a lump, covering his head with the blanket and curling into the fetal position. 

Steve talks to the lump on the mattress a lot. The lump rarely responds.

If he does, he’s short. He’ll snap at Steve that he barely got any sleep and why the hell did he leave the light on and can he just have a bit of silence for five fucking minutes?

It happens and it happens until a bitterness builds up in Steve’s mouth, tasting like the cough syrup he drank as a child.

Bucky gets a little pale, a shade or so lighter, enough that only Steve notices. His arm, what he has left of it, aches a lot. His facial hair has grown in patches. His once well-loved drum kit sits in the living room collecting dust, but it’s not like he can play it anyway. His hair is matted and greasy and Steve can’t think of the last time he saw him wash it.

Bucky only leaves the apartment for a checkup with his doctor so he can take the gauze off his half-stolen left arm and show Steve how to change his bandages. It’s the first time Steve sees the gnarled up and sewn together flesh. He wants to look away for the sake of politeness but he and Bucky have been past polite for some time, so he just keeps staring.

The doctor asks Bucky questions about how he’s adjusting back to civilization. How he’s coping. Bucky stays quiet. Steve answers for him.

Steve’s been taking a lot of time off work; time he really can’t afford even though Bucky’s getting decent checks from the government, almost like an apology for taking his arm along with his smile.

Steve goes back to work eventually, partially because he misses the kids and mostly because he can’t stand to be where he’s reminded of old times; of the future that he dreamed up while Bucky was gone and seeing what it is now.

One night after a tedious day at work where an excited five-year-old smeared red paint down Steve’s good shirt, he treads back into the apartment. He’s so tired that his bones ache.

He thinks back on a time where Bucky would laugh at Steve’s disheveled appearance, pull him into his lap, kiss along his neck and ask him, _“Who took the sugar from your face, sugar?”_

Before Steve can lock the front door, he hears harsh voices muffled in his bedroom. He nearly goes for the baseball bat they keep next to the fridge until it registers that it’s a voice he knows.

Bucky’s talking. He’s talking more than Steve’s heard him talk in weeks. His speech is muffled and frantic and Steve thinks for one horrifying moment that there’s another man in their room.

He steps carefully towards their closed door, walking on his tiptoes and tenses whenever a loose board squeaks. When he makes it outside the door, he presses his ear against it.

A while ago, back when they first started dating, Steve asked Bucky why he never spoke to his mother. He spoke about her enough for Steve to know she existed and Bucky cared, at least a little.

Bucky just laughed and explained that his parents were homophobic hicks on a farm up north. Why the hell would they speak to their gay son?

He never brought them up much after.

But here, more than two years later, Steve hears Bucky say, “I’m trying, Mama, I just don’t know what to do.”

His voice sounds thick and wet. He’s crying.

Steve holds his breath and presses closer.

“I want to get better, but I can’t,” Bucky hisses out, the words at the end breaking. There’s another pause, longer this time. A buzz that could be a voice comes from the other line. Bucky’s crying harder now when he insists, “I can’t even talk to him! I want to — I want to more than anything but it’s hard, Mama.”

He’s sobbing now. The buzzing voice on the phone is talking faster. Steve can’t breathe.

Steve grips the door handle, cold metal turning warm and slick beneath his palm. He wants to push it open and yell that _he’s right here! He’s right fucking here! Why can’t he talk to him if he’s right here?_

But he doesn’t. He lets his grip loosen and drops his hand. It hangs limply by his side as he steps away from the door. A numbness worms its way down to his toes.

He turns towards the kitchen. He goes to make dinner.

And he vows to try harder.

***

**A little fuzzy. Between late 2017 and March 2019**

Pops passed away sometime in late 2017. He had a heart attack in the bright sun while plowing dry dirt.

Bucky didn’t get the invite for the funeral. He read about it in an obituary in a Middle Eastern town that he couldn’t remember the name of. Bullets littered the ground there. Children collected and traded them.

Sam, Bucky’s favorite member of the regime, dropped the paper on Bucky’s lap while he rolled a cigarette and asked, “This your dad? We got it mailed in from your hometown. Said he’s got some kid named James Buchanan.”

A month or so after coming home, Bucky figured it was safe to call his mama. She always smoothed his hair after a nightmare and kissed his wounds. She’d know how to get him out of bed, especially since his sheets were starting to stink from all the days of laying in it.

Sometimes Steve could roll Bucky out and plop him on the couch just so he could put on fresh sheets, but Bucky learned to wrap them around him tighter and tense up until he was as heavy as a bolder and scrawny Steve eventually threw his hands up and went to sleep on the couch.

It took Bucky a while to dial her number because he’s only got one thumb and it was shaking like hell.

Mama was a little reluctant to speak at first. She sounded like talking to him was breaking some unspoken rule. Eventually, with a shaking inhale, she asked how he was doing. She heard through the grapevine, because somehow people from his high school managed to keep tabs on him and Clint, that Bucky had been seeing someone for some time now.

His voice was hollow and robotic when he told her about Steve. It was like reciting a speech he’d given a hundred times. Back then, before all that shit he’d seen, the speech was vivacious and full of quick jokes and fond smiles. Now it just sounded perfunctory.

Steve was perfect. Steve was good. Steve wasn’t someone to be messed with unless you wanted a bony fist to the nose.

And the thing with Steve is that he wants to help. He keeps staring at Bucky with that guilty look that he thinks he can hide with a scowl when he’s caught.

It’s not his fault that Bucky can’t get out of bed.

Bucky still loves him; he’s just tired.

***

**Some time ago…**

_in Brooklyn, New York._

Steve planned to enlist after his mom explained why Dad wasn’t there to push him on the swing or teach him how to ride a bike.

It started when he was five. He marched right up to her while she made him lunch. He was clad in cargo shorts, a marines ball cap and a t-shirt stating that his father was a US Army veteran. 

Steve grinned up at her, tongue peeking out of the gap from his missing tooth, and proudly proclaimed that one day he was gonna be just like dad.

She smiled but her eyes had a shine to them that wasn’t happy.

“That’s great, Stevie,” she finally whispered even though it was just them in the house. She ran a gentle hand through his hair.

She didn’t say anything else as she turned to finish his PB&J so he ran to the living room to play. A tear cut down her cheek after he left. She wiped it away with the sleeve of her sweater.

While Steve read books with pictures of military vehicles while he was sick in bed or when he played airplane pilots with the neighbor boys, Ma would hold her breath and turn away. He never understood why.

As he got older, the passion never faltered, but he developed new dreams.

He was sick during high school registration and got left with the classes no one wanted; entry-level English, college-level algebra, physics, econ, and art. At first, he pitched a fit. He didn’t want these classes. He wanted to be in the auto shop, but Ma just tsked and reminded him that the fumes would spark his asthma.

He stomped into that art class with a chip on his shoulder and a scowl on his face, but the second his teacher let him start painting he fell in love. He got caught up in the brush strokes, the colors, the way he could use his fingers to smear and shade. He’d come back after school and start a new piece while his teacher was grading assignments and his ma was held up being a nurse at an urgent care.

Steve got a set of charcoal pencils and a drawing pad that Christmas. They were all used up by March.

When Steve was shading in a figure at the kitchen table, a blanket around his shoulders and a cup of tea resting by his fist, Ma sighed and relaxed against her spot at the kitchen counter.

She caught a bad cold in 2012, right before Steve was set to graduate. It was the kind of where you’re up all night hacking and your muscles ache so bad that you can’t get out of bed. She couldn’t afford time off work. It wasn’t long before it became pneumonia. Like Steve, she was always so frail.

She never shook it.

She was gone come fall, a couple of months after Steve turned eighteen. She had one dying wish and it was for Steve to forget about the army and pursue a career in art. 

It wasn’t that easy. All he was left with was an asbestos-filled apartment, a closet full of her stale-smelling clothes, and a mountain of hospital bills.

They never had the best insurance since Dad died so long ago. Late nights when Steve was little and fighting bronchitis, Ma would beg the hospital operator for them to use Dad’s insurance one last time.

The grand old US, the one Dad died for, didn’t help when Steve was dying and they didn’t when Ma did. Steve was left to pay the debt and that meant no college, no art degree, no nothing. 

There was only one thing left, but Ma all but forbid him. 

He was set to attend classes that August, two weeks after Ma passed. Instead, he found himself working through the hiring section of a recycled newspaper and calling every number listed. Someone had to pay her bills and Steve still needed all his medications and doctor visits.

He worked as a hostess, a fry cook, an elementary school custodian, a barista and a clerk at a secondhand book store. 

That’s where he met Peggy Carter, a nice girl who co-owned the bookstore with some guy named Stark who handled all the business from home. She never had lipstick on her teeth even though bright red would end up over anyone else's. She moved from England a couple of years earlier. She had to get away from her family. Her parents never approved of her love of women.

Steve was always thankful Ma never pitched a fit when he came out to her. He could never hide it. Once, she took him to a little boutique in an area of Queens that Steve had only heard of online. It was where Ma bought him his first pride pin.

“Brier Creek Elementary? On Stillwell?” Peggy asked, flicking through Steve’s sketchbook while he put used stickers on a stack of donated books.

“The one and only,” Steve grumbled, “the kids are nasty. You have no idea how many times I mopped shit off the bathroom floor.” 

“That’s where my Angie works!” Peggy exclaimed, pushing up on her tiptoes in excitement. Then, she casted another glance at a figure drawing that he did of his mother back in high school.

“You know,” she continued, voice pensive, “I hear they’re looking for someone to help in the after school program. An art teacher?”

“Are they now?” Steve mumbled, too focused on the task at hand to give her much attention.

“I might have a way to get someone a job there. If they were interested, of course.”

Steve’s hand paused on the sticker gun, slowly raising his eyes to meet hers. She smiled and raised an eyebrow.

A week later, he had the job.

A month after that when he was evicted from his apartment, Peggy offered him a place at hers and Angie’s; a little one-bedroom in Brooklyn Heights. It was cramped, creaky and damp but he had a roof over his head. 

They spent the year going to queer bars, gay clubs, and pride festivals. Steve didn’t think he could smile this much since Ma wasn’t there to smile with him.

But even with a real job and good friends, Steve’s stomach still felt empty. Insatiable. A hunger deep in his gut that he couldn’t shake.

Peggy and Angie both tried to convince him otherwise, but it was a battle lost before it even started. A battle that not even his own mother could win. 

“You could be one of those — oh, Pegs what are they called? Oh! The National Guard? I hear they don’t have to fight,” Angie said over a box of chow mein. They were all sitting on the torn up and coffee-stained rug lying in the middle of the living room, eating Chinese take out. 

“Or you could stay and keep your job that offers benefits and tenure instead of risking your life,” Peggy offered sarcastically while effortlessly using chopsticks to grab an eggroll.

Steve rolled his eyes and stabbed one with his fork, “I appreciate your guys’ concern and I like my job and everything but,” he twirled his eggroll, tilting his fork up before it could fall and then looked at his two friends, “I just feel like I should be doing more, you know?”

“No, I don’t know,” Peggy snapped, “I think you’re doing plenty.”

Steve smiled and popped the eggroll into his mouth. He had his first appointment with a recruitment officer scheduled for the morning.

**

Bucky spent the first two years in New York sleeping on Clint’s couch. He pressed his pillow over his ears when Clint and Natasha’s bed smacked the wall to a rhythm that wasn’t innocent.

Natasha's voice was smooth and pleasant and she could play bass. She wasn’t in a band, which was fine since she fit into theirs without a hitch. She called them the Widows and painted posters to put all over town.

Natasha also had friends everywhere. These friends got the band new guitars, a grown-up drum set for Bucky, and venues to play in.

One friend owned some tiny bar in Queens. He let them play there every weekend. Another friend owned a small venue in Sunnyside. A third had a place in Harlem. 

Even with that help, the band never went anywhere.

The most money they could scrounge up was only enough for Bucky to get his own bed. It was better than the limp couch, but he was still stuck in their living room.

One day a small man in a cheap suit said he was an agent and wanted to sign them. It didn’t work out. Another band came around and asked if the Widows could open for them on tour. There was another band after that. Then another. But something came up. Something always came up. It was never the right time.

It got worse and worse as the years went by. People stopped coming to the venues. Their posters got ripped down. Their phones stopped ringing. Natasha couldn’t get ahold of those friends anymore.

Clint and Bucky ended up working as bartenders and construction workers and mechanics while Natasha made suspicious phone calls and picked up envelopes of money left in their mailbox.

On August 18, 2016, Bucky stumbled down Pitkin Avenue after a bad hookup, itching for a cigarette and a good night's sleep, when he came across a building with smudged windows and a sign that said “Army Career Center” in blocky yellow letters.

The grinning man on the pamphlet crossed his mind. As did his baby sister’s toothless smile. And the farm. And his parents.

The military would pay for college when he was out. His family could use money from a college-educated man. And if he didn’t make it back home, then maybe they’d get a hefty check from the government as an apology.

Bucky was at the end of his rope. He didn’t have anything else to lose. What was the worst that could happen?

He wiped the sweat off his hands onto his jeans and smiled before he opened the door.

***

**September 18, 2016**

_Their first ‘real’ date._

“Coney Island?” Steve scoffed, looking at the two crisp, cardstock tickets lying on Bucky’s bed in front of him, “This is what you call a date?”

After two months of hooking up in the one-bedroom apartment that smelled like stale weed and Lysol or Steve’s roach-infested place he shared with Peggy and Angie, Bucky finally gathered the gall to ask Steve out on a date. A real one. One that didn’t just involve sweaty sheets and unfortunate squealing roommates walking in on them.

Clint threatened to bleach his eyes out and then burn the couch if he caught them on it again. He was the one who gave Bucky the tickets, telling him to take his guy out somewhere before they tainted every inch of the apartment.

Bucky grinned beside Steve, puffing around his cigarette, “Sure is, baby. They got something called the love canal.”

“Gross!” Clint yelled from his and Natasha’s room.

“Then quit eavesdropping!” Steve yelled back, not even looking over his shoulder towards Clint’s room. He kept turning the tickets in his hands, lips pinched in contemplation.

Bucky laughed and swung an arm over Steve’s shoulders. He swayed them side to side, a grin stretching across his face as he sing-songed, “C’mon honey. We’ll go on the Ferris wheel and everything. I’ll even win you a stuffed animal.”

Steve twisted his lips from one side to another. “I threw up on the Cyclone once,” he admitted.

Bucky stopped moving them so he could wrap his other arm around Steve and press a kiss to his hair. “Then we won’t go on the Cyclone. It’ll be fun, sweetheart. I promise,” he assured. 

Steve still seemed unsure.

Bucky’s heart began that offbeat pattern when it knew it would be disappointed. It wasn’t that he liked Coney Island that much; it was a sleazy tourist attraction, but he had yet to take Steve out on a real date and he’d just been requested for basic training.

There wasn’t a rush, the letter assured, but he’d need it done within a year.

Steve sighed, dropped the tickets back onto the mattress and twisted around so he was facing Bucky. He pressed his palms against Bucky’s cheeks and pecked his lips. “Fine. But you’re paying for the subway,” he relented

Bucky rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah, my mama raised me right. Tried at least. I’ll pay the subway, honey, don’t worry. I got the tickets, didn’t I?”

“I got the tickets!” Clint shouted. A magazine flew out of the open door of his and Natasha’s room, landing with a loud clap three feet away from the bed.

“Shut up!” Bucky and Steve yelled back.

A week later on a night where neither of them had work, they headed to the harbor.

The air around Coney Island managed to be sticky and stale all at once. The stretch of fried food, porta-potties, cotton candy, and saltwater clogged their noses as they weaved through the heavy crowd of tourists and locals.

Steve kept his hand in Bucky’s so they wouldn’t get lost. Bucky kinda hated holding a sweaty palm with his slick hand but it was okay because it was Steve.

And Bucky liked Steve, not just because he was the best lay he had all year. Steve was cute and pensive and cold when he needed to be and he joked with Bucky’s friends and liked the same kind of music he did and he listened, actually listened, when Bucky talked, even if it was about stupid things like _Star Wars_ or the best brand of drum sticks.

And as if he wasn’t already a saint, Steve worked with kids who rubbed their dirty hands on his shirt and pulled on his hair too much and the job didn’t even pay great but Steve always talked about it with a smile. He was the best artist Bucky had ever seen and he had this cute little wrinkle between his eyebrows when he was working on a sketch.

Only two weeks into their meetups, Bucky realized they spent a lot more time talking and cuddling than screwing. The weirdest part was that he didn’t even care. He probably talked fondly about Steve too often because there was some point where Natasha groaned and told him to just take the guy out already.

On the pier, Steve stopped so suddenly that Bucky walked smack into one of Steve’s boney shoulders. Bucky winced while Steve jumped around to look at him.

Steve beamed as he asked, “Were you serious about those stuffed animals?”

Bucky’s brow furrowed, “Yeah?”

Steve grinned as he turned towards the booth in front of them. The sides of it were stacked to the top with oversized stuffed animals. It was a stupid bullseye game where the player had to throw a hacky sack with the right amount of force straight in the middle to knock a board over.

A teenage vendor with a ridiculous blue and yellow striped hat and a matching shirt stood behind it, leaning his elbows on the booth and his head in his palms. He blinked sluggishly like he was struggling to stay awake despite the squeals of children, the whoosh of roller coasters, and America’s top forty blasting through unseen speakers.

Steve’s boney finger, one with a bruised knuckle and a hangnail, pointed to the largest toy; a stuffed octopus, hanging at the top of the booth.

“I want that one,” he stated, turning towards Bucky with his eyebrows quirked up.

This was a challenge, Bucky quickly realized.

Well, fine. Bucky didn’t mind a challenge.

He shook his head and smirked, rolling the sleeves of his frayed sweatshirt that he stole from Clint before he walked up to the booth. He passed the teen a five-dollar bill and in return, he was given two hacky sacks and no further instruction.

He shrugged and took his first shot.

It buzzed right past the target and hit the back of the booth with a dull thud before landing limply on the ground.

Steve started cackling behind him, arms crossed over his belly and head tilted back.

“Oh my god,” he wheezed, “you’re gonna need to work on your aim if you wanna snipe for the army, pal.”

Bucky huffed, smirk wiped clean from his face and instead a look of vague annoyance and embarrassment brushed his face in red.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbled as he wound his arm back once more, “why don’t you win me an octopus next time?”

He sent the hacky sack whizzing through the air. The teen took an emotionless sidestep to miss getting clunked. The sack knocked over some extra stuffed animals in the back, but it didn’t come close to the bullseye.

With a growl, Bucky shoved another five at the teen and grabbed the hacky sacks himself.

He missed.

And he missed it again.

And Steve kept laughing.

“Thought you said you were gonna win me one, Barnes?”

“I will!” Bucky quipped, a little defensive. “I promised, didn’t I?”

Bucky twisted his hair into a bun so it laid at the nape of his neck instead of getting in his face. He shoved another five in the teen’s palm and snatched another set of two hacky sacks.

With a final huff, he cast the ball. It hit the side of the bullseye, but it was strong enough for the whole board to tip over. Zipping lights flashed and loud buzzing alarms started blaring. 

The teen pressed a button to make the noise stop and passed Bucky a tiny stuffed turtle. A blue turtle. One so small that Bucky laid it flat in his palm and covered most of it with his fingers.

Bucky gawked down at it, the tiny blue turtle, and then at the teen.

“The octopus?” Bucky asked.

The teen barely lifted his shoulders in a careless shrug, “You have to knock it down five times in a row for the ones at the top.”

“Are you fucking—”

“Buck,” Steve laughed, putting a placating but cold hand on Bucky’s bicep, “it’s fine. I like turtles.”

Then he plucked the little blue turtle from Bucky’s palm and pulled him away before he could throw hands with a sixteen-year-old.

After that, Steve insisted on getting everything since Bucky nearly drained himself of all the cash he brought for one fucking blue turtle. Steve bought them corn dogs, rides tickets, and too much cotton candy.

“I can buy something, Steve. It was only a few bucks. And for a tiny blue, fucking _blue_ turtle.”

Steve shrugged, popping another pinch of blue candy onto his tongue.

“I like blue,” he said. 

For the rest of the night, Steve clutched that toy to his chest like it was the most precious thing in the world. When they were away from most people, tucked behind a dark corner of two abandoned booths and beneath a coaster that shook the boards beneath their feet, Steve got up on his tiptoes and kissed Bucky.

They never ended up on the tunnel of love. Buck grinned and gripped Steve’s wrist and pulled him towards the subway station. 

Steve cracked up behind him, happily letting himself get dragged.

That night while Bucky held himself above Steve and they exchanged soft but stretched out kisses, Steve broke away and put his hand on Bucky’s chest for a moment. His breathing was deep and heavy but not because his lungs were giving out.

His eyes were hooded but his pupils were wide. His lips settled on a content smile.

“So,” he started and Bucky moved to start kissing down his neck, “we’re official now?”

Bucky’s lips lifted, soft and warm against the pulse in Steve’s neck as he murmured, “Honey, I’m gonna date the hell out of you.”

They slept in the next morning, comfortably snoring beside each other. They awoke as one would come out of soft water.

Light filtered in softly and glowed around Steve like a Renaissance painting. It shined across the white hairs on his arms, his face, and his mussed up hair. One hand curled under his cheek. His breath was steady and his eyes were opened slightly. He looked down at where he played with Bucky’s fingers. A ghost of a smile laid on his lips.

Bucky wished he was the one who could paint. No picture could do this scene or his honey justice.

“Hey, Buck?” Steve spoke quietly to not break the peaceful haze around them, “Why’d you enlist? Really.”

Bucky sighed, tightly weaving his fingers between Steve’s to bring their hands up to his lips to press a kiss against Steve’s blue veins.

Steve was looking at him now. Bucky stared at their fingers.

“You ever heard that phrase ‘playing God?’” Bucky asked.

“Mmhm.”

“Well, that’s kind of it, isn’t it? Playing God. I’m choosing what to do with my future,” he explained, stroking his thumb over Steve’s knuckles.

It’s quiet for a moment. The walls absorbed the words as fast as Steve could process them.

“I don’t think you know what that term means,” Steve mumbled, dropping his eyes back to their hands. 

Bucky sighed and lifted Steve’s hand to kiss his knuckles again. 

“I don’t mean to scare you, baby,” he assured, “it’s just all about choices. I never got to make them much before, but I’ve got the chance to make some now.” 

“So if you kill someone, that’s you making a choice?” Steve whispered, voice tight, “What if they kill you?”

Bucky’s eyes came to meet Steve’s then, wide and blue and scared.

“Guess it’s only fair that they play God, too.”


	2. "Tired are they. Here they go."

**The end of March and through April**

_He’s not doing well._

The room smells like rot.

There’s trash all over the nightstand. There are three half-filled water glasses, a pile of empty soda cans, old bags of chips with crumbs spilling out of their openings and onto the carpet, old dishes with mold tacked to the bottom and crumbled old cartons of cigarettes.

Steve used to clean the place up. At the end of his already long week, he’d come in with a garbage bag and throw out the mess Bucky made with a stubborn line set between his brows. Sometimes he’d talk to Bucky while cleaning and sometimes Bucky would listen. Sometimes he’d work the energy to nod and hum at the lulls in Steve’s speech.

But mostly, it just gave Bucky a headache and he wanted Steve to just shut up and leave him alone.

Steve stopped cleaning eventually. The vacuum stopped running one day. Trash pick up petered off until it piled back up on the nightstand. Washing the sheets was almost always out of the question. 

Clint leaves messages on their old answering machine. He says things like, _Barnes, you son of a bitch, you didn’t say you were back! Nat and I are thinking about bringing pizza or something to your place on Friday. You scared the shit out of us man. We thought you were...aw, well that doesn’t matter. Give us a call._

Or _Hey, man, it’s Clint. I talked to Steve already but I really wanna hear from you, too. Give us a call if you can._

Or _Hey, it’s Clint again. We’re starting to worry a little. I think Steve is, too. Steve if you’re listening, sorry for snitching._

Or _Buck, Nat’s half a second away from going to your place and knocking the door down. Just call us back, okay?_

Steve deletes them all after he lets them play once. He knows Bucky’s not gonna call him back. That much he can accept.

And Bucky can’t even bring himself to care. He can’t rehearse with them anymore because he’s only got one fucking arm, but the phantom limb aches something awful most days. He tells himself that’s the only reason why he can’t get out of bed.

Not because the air is too clean here or guilt’s sitting like a lead ton in his chest and it weighs him down. It’s not that the thought of standing up to dress and make breakfast makes him want to cry because _that’s_ what’s hard now.

Surviving used to be so easy when it was the only thing on his mind. But now he’s a survivor and for what? To go on and say he watched his friends explode? To remember their blood splashing his face? To watch while everyone stares at his stump of an arm because he lost most of it fighting for something he didn’t understand? To interact and laugh and joke like a human even though he hadn’t felt like one for a long, long time?

He can’t even ask himself what’s wrong because he doesn’t have the energy for that either.

***

**May 2019**

After a month of convincing and countless calls with his mom, Bucky sees a therapist. Steve signs him up for one through the local VA.

Steve has to drag him through the door while Bucky’s feet slide across the carpet. Steve isn’t strong and Bucky ain’t exactly light either. Still, Steve is as stubborn as he is frail. He gets Bucky through the door and to the office only twenty minutes late.

The therapist gives Bucky bottles of prescriptions; blue kinds, and red kinds, and the kinds that make him sleep well, and the kinds that make him not so scared.

When Steve calls to see about a second appointment, he gets stuck in an endless cycle of transfers until one monotone voice says they’re all booked for the time being.

It’s okay though because Bucky’s softer now, less grouchy, and Steve can’t tell if it’s the pills or his own placebo fueled mind making him think that he’s seeing a difference.

Bucky laughs sometimes. Sure, Steve only heard it once during a _Charmin_ commercial while he was in the other room, but it was a laugh. It sounded just like the laugh Steve knew; the one that he replays in his mind during those cold nights when Bucky’s up watching television and Steve bites his nails in the bedroom.

Sometimes, Bucky reacts when Steve talks. His eyebrows quirk up and light seeps into his eyes. He nods and grunts and in the right light, Steve thinks he might be smiling.

Steve talks about how with the money they get from the government once a month, they don’t have to penny pinch anymore. They could buy cable if they wanted. Hell, they could even go to a ballgame sometime. They didn’t have to buy from the clearance shelf in the back of the grocery store anymore, but when Steve asks Bucky what he wants for dinner, Bucky doesn’t answer.

One night, Steve wakes up to a glass smashing in the kitchen. He sprints out of their room to the front area and sees Bucky slouched on the fake wood floor, his hand pressed against his face and covered in blood. Three pickles, the green juice they soaked in, and shards of glass litter the floor.

Bucky’s screaming into his palm. Steve stands frozen in the doorway but melts when he sees Bucky digging his fingernails into the open wounds.

While he’s cleaning Bucky up in the bathroom, a bottle of antiseptic in one hand and a wet towel in the other, he keeps telling himself that it’s okay because _he’s getting better. He’s getting better. The pills are helping. He’s getting better. I’ll call the VA again tomorrow._

But they don’t pick up.

And Steve tells himself that it’s okay.

It’s what he tells himself all week when Bucky has setback after setback. It’s what he says when he finds Bucky sitting underneath the sharp spray of freezing water in the shower, so cold Steve could feel it from the doorway. It’s what he says when Bucky goes days without talking.

It’s what he says until he can’t anymore.

Steve has a bad day at work. He was grouchy so the kids were, too. Having to care for his partner like he’s his child with no support from anyone has taken more of a toll than Steve could admit.

He comes home that night in a foul mood. He storms through the door, down the hallway, and into their room.

Bucky lies curled up in a lump under their sheets, covered head to toe. His back is to the door. Steve only knows that he’s alive because the blanket lifts with every breath he takes.

Steve stares for a moment before he storms into the bathroom to wash his face with ice water and calm down. Once he’s there, he can only notice the empty pill bottles on the counter. Bucky’s prescription bottles. Steve zeroes in on them until his vision gets blurred and fuzzy.

Bucky flushed the pills down the toilet.

Steve knows the VA won’t have time to refill them anytime soon.

“They make me feel funny,” the lump says, “You mad?”

Steve braces his hands on the sink counter. He takes a deep breath and opens his eyes.

This wasn’t how these months were supposed to go. They should be married by now. Bucky promised, he _promised_ that as soon as he’d come back he’d...he’d…

Now Steve’s left alone with a corpse of a fiancé in his bed in the apartment that they worked months of overtime and extra shifts and second jobs just to put a down payment on. The apartment they worked for because they wanted to build a future together. And now its all gone to rot like the moldy food under the bed that Steve is just too damn exhausted to clean up.

“I'm not mad,” he seethes very slowly. He looks into his own eyes that dance like angry fire and his teeth are bared. “I’m not mad. I’m just…”

Pissed off. Betrayed. Taken advantage of. Furious. Want to call the VA but they’re not going to pick up again. Hurt. 

Steve takes a deep breath and closes his eyes again.

He speaks softer this time, “I’m tired, alright? I’m just tired.”

***

**It’s just a feeling he has.**

_Steve’s anger is like a pot of water._

_Boil and simmer. Boil and simmer._

_God, he hates him. God, he loves him. God, he doesn’t know what to do._

***

**Summer of 2017.**

_Before Bucky set out for basic training._

“July?” Steve asked, throat growing thick. He pressed his phone closer to his ear as if he’d somehow misheard something, “That soon?”

“It’s just boot camp, baby.” Bucky laughed. It was crackly through the phone, almost robotic, “I’ll be gone maybe twelve weeks and then I’m all yours.”

Steve swallowed and forced a light tone, “Yeah! Yeah, you’re right I,”

He stopped, suddenly fearing the consequences of speaking his true feelings. He couldn’t tell Bucky that he’d be taken away again. He couldn’t say that twelve weeks was still a long time. He couldn’t say that he was still going to miss him. 

“I guess you’re right,” was all he could come up with. 

***

The first eight months of their relationship were the best months of their lives. They were rarely seen without each other. They’d call each other as soon as they were awake and talk at night until they fell asleep. Peggy and Angie learned to expect Bucky coming along to anything they invited Steve to. Clint and Natasha joked that the two of them were attached at the hip.

“Enjoy the honeymoon phase while it lasts, fellas,” Clint laughed for the first three months.

“Why do you say that as if ours hasn’t lasted?” Natasha purred in his ear until Clint blew raspberries in her face.

“In all honesty, Steve, you really are something,” Natasha stated while nonchalantly wiping Clint’s spit off her face, “I don’t think a man’s ever turned Bucky pink before he met you.”

And Steve, while perched on Bucky’s lap as Bucky swiveled back and forth on his drum stool, turned pink himself. 

It was the beginning of that summer when Steve couldn’t afford his split of the rent and Bucky couldn’t stand living in his friends’ living room, that they decided to move in together. Most would say they were rushing things, that couples usually wait at least a year before they share a bed full time.

Unfortunately for Steve and Bucky, a year was a luxury they did not have.

So they found a tiny apartment in the worst part of Brooklyn. The bathroom light leaked when it rained and rats were heard scurrying inside the walls. It was a forty-minute subway ride to Steve’s school. Bucky had to relocate to a mechanic who paid worse but was across the street from them.

Bucky was bummed when he realized he couldn’t practice with the band as much anymore, so he spent a lot of his free time banging on his dinged up drum set in their living room. Steve didn’t even mind. Bucky always caught him bobbing his head. It made him love Steve a little bit more every time.

Within a month, they were two parts of the same machine. They always knew what the other wanted for dinner without asking. If Bucky had a bad day, Steve always knew how and when to cheer him up. If Steve’s day was shit, Bucky knew how long to leave him alone.

They spent Friday nights tipsy, playing Connect Four on the living room carpet. On Saturday mornings, Steve would flop onto Bucky’s chest while the latter sprawled on the couch to watch _Looney Tunes_. On Sundays, they’d schmooze the sweet lady at the corner store into giving them discounts on her best selling donuts. On the muggiest days of summer, they’d make paper fans out of junk mail and fan each other on the couch.

They worked out systems like putting their pineapple magnet on the dishwasher when it was clean. They had rotations for who’s turn it was to clean the bathroom. They flipped a coin to decide who got to choose their Saturday night movie.

“Heads I win, tails you lose?” Steve grinned, holding a mostly green penny between his fingers.

Bucky rolled his eyes but leaned forward to press a wet kiss onto Steve’s cheek.

“Nice try, baby,” he chuckled, “but that trick only worked on me eight times before I figured it out.”

Bucky volunteered in Steve’s summer classes on his days off and Steve cheered for Bucky’s band when no one else would. Bucky picked up Steve’s medicines from the pharmacy when Steve couldn’t get out of bed.

“I can get it myself, Buck,” Steve would grumble under the comforter raised to his nose. Bucky would stick his tongue out and throw the medicine-filled paper bag at him.

Most days, they were content just to be with each other, in the same room solving puzzles or walking around the block in silence. They’d just hold each other's hand, interlock their fingers and breath together, serene like two buoys bobbing on top of the ocean.

When they think back on it, it was an amazing summer, the best either of them ever had. But then again, people live life to the fullest when they know their expiration date.

Terminal cancer patients see the world. Dying children go to Disneyland. A man due for war buys an engagement ring for his honey.

**

Brier Creek’s summer classes gave shit pay and even shittier working conditions. Steve was placed in a tiny classroom with three folding tables covered in plastic tablecloths that tore three minutes into the first day. The janitor only worked weekends, so the floor gathered scraps of paper and glitter in ever-growing piles.

Steve got stuck with a group of thirty-some-odd six to ten-year-olds and only enough art supplies for a class of twenty. This left him with about ten upset little boys and girls.

“Lilia, if I had the money for another foam unicorn, I would buy it for you in a heartbeat, but I don’t,” Steve explained in a calm demeanor that went against his anxiously knotted insides.

“Why not?!” the seven-year-old wailed, rubbing harshly at her eyes.

He crouched in front of her, debating whether or not it was appropriate to hug her. He ended up stiffly patting her shoulder while she hiccupped and wept.

He was ready to give up hope of ever calming Lilia down when suddenly a squeal erupted from the second table.

“Mr. Bucky!” six-year-old Marleen screamed, racing to the door.

Steve twisted around just in time to see Bucky, who was still wearing his stained coveralls and undershirt, swoop Marleen off the ground and into a giant bear hug.

She shrieked in laughter and accidentally rubbed her red paint-covered hands all over Bucky’s only good undershirt.

Instead of showing any form of annoyance, Bucky just grinned and said, “Jeez Luis, Marleen, you trying to become a finger painter?”

“Noooo,” Marleen giggled and leaned backward in Bucky’s arms.

Steve stood up from the ground. He put his hands on his hips and asked, “Did Dorothy let you in here or did you break in?”

Bucky scoffed, placing Marleen on the ground and nudging her back to her table. 

He strode over to Steve and snarked, “Is that even a question, Stevie? You know Dot loves me.”

Steve rolled his eyes but stood on his toes to give Bucky a kiss.

“Hey,” he breathed against Bucky’s lips. A soft smile rested on his face.

“Hey yourself,” Bucky smiled back, pecking him one more time.

“Ew!” three kids yelled.

Steve laughed and Bucky scoffed, “Oh we’re gross? Half of you still eat your boogers.”

“No I don’t!” one nondescript little boy claimed.

Steve turned back to Bucky and picked at the drying paint on his shirt, “Nick let you off early?”

“Nah, I’m on my lunch. Just figured I’d stop by and say hey to the kiddos,” Bucky grinned and turned towards the table with the littlest ones to wave a finger at them.

Steve raised an eyebrow and stepped back. He put a hand on his hip and deadpanned, “It’s a forty-minute ride, Buck. How long of a lunch break does he give you?”

Bucky shrugged and mumbled, “Long as I need.”

Steve was about to question it further when Lilia sniffed behind him. This caught Bucky’s attention, who’s face pinched in concern as he dropped to his knees in front of her.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked, placing a gentle hand on her arm.

“Mr. Rogers said there’s not enough unicorns for everyone,” she snuffled, tears drying on her face.

“Oh no! Well, we can’t have that, can we?”

Bucky pushed himself up and held out his hand, which she took with a wet smile. He led her back to her table, grabbing a piece of construction paper and calling, “Hey Stevie, you know how to draw a unicorn?”

“I know!” Lilia insisted as she plucked a crayon from the scratched-up plastic basket. Her tearful pout morphed into a grin in seconds as Bucky helped her draw the creature and cut it out.

Steve watched their interaction in awe. Buck had always been good with kids. Buck had always wanted kids. But Steve and Bucky couldn’t have kids, at least not by themselves and not now. Bucky was due for boot camp in just a few weeks.

It was at that moment that Steve realized they were both meant for lives much different than the ones they’d been given. He realized the unfairness of it all; that they would never get that life they should have lived. 

**

On July twenty-fourth, 2017, Steve sent Bucky off to basic for twelve weeks. He came back before Halloween. They dressed up as shitty pirates, cutting up dress shirts they found at the thrift store. They gave away too much candy to kids at their complex.

Bucky was gone again before Thanksgiving.

***

**November 18, 2017. **

_Goodbye. Not the first, not the last._

“You gonna miss me, Stevie?” Bucky asked as Steve straightened collar. He smiled through his aching stomach. His fists were clenched and clammy by his sides.

He didn’t want to go.

The airport was bustling. A few stopped to admire Bucky’s pristine uniform. Tan camouflage didn’t blend well in the city. 

“‘Course, Buck. I’d always miss you,” Steve said. He wasn’t smiling. His tongue was pushed into his cheek. He didn’t look into Bucky’s eyes.

They made a point to not make a scene. They said their goodbyes at home. 

Steve still lurched forward and wrapped his arms around Bucky’s torso. He pressed his face into Bucky’s chest and hissed, “I’m gonna be so pissed at you if you don’t come home.”

Bucky gave a dry chuckle and whispered, “Don’t you worry about that, hon. I’m gonna come back in one piece, just wait and see.”

Though there was an unspoken truth that laid on the surface of Bucky’s eyes; he was scared.

***

**It’s just a feeling he had.**

_Bucky squished bodies beneath his boots like bugs. How bleak life of war is. How strange. Everyone is dead here. The survivors only count the minutes until they, too, are in the ground._

_At least then all he’d smell is dirt. Not the rot and copper tinge of blood and bullets._

***

**War.**

Bucky hated his unit. Or maybe he just missed home. He couldn’t tell the difference.

He met them on the plane ride to Syria. They didn’t exchange words except for their last names. One of them was crying to himself. He was the youngest one; the one straight out of high school with baby fat that hadn’t yet left his cheeks.

The unit called themselves the Howling Commandos, but howling gave off the idea that they died bravely.

None of them did. They all left crying for their mothers.

“Do you miss your mother, Barnes?” Rumlow, a roach with slimy teeth and cuts on his face asked one morning while the two of them were on lookout duty, “You think she would care much if you died?”

Bucky stared at his powdered coffee, mixing it past absorption. His rifle laid across his lap. The other guys were still snoring. 

“‘Cause you’re, you know,” Rumlow laughed, waving his hand over Bucky like that held an explanation.

“‘Cause I’m what?” Bucky grumbled, “A fag?”

“Yeah man,” Rumlow cackled louder now that the punchline had been given, “I’m not trying to be offensive but, you know, would she?”

“Man shut the hell up,” Wilson snapped from his sleeping bag a couple of feet yonder.

Bucky liked Sam. He talked all the guys out of suicidal stupors and waited for each man to make it to their next post. He’d go as far as to carry men on his back if they were too exhausted. He carried Bucky twenty feet after he passed out from dehydration and Bucky wasn’t small.

Bucky bit his lip hard to keep from smirking. Rumlow still punched his arm.

**

Bucky couldn’t for the life of him remember how he became the sergeant.

**

War wasn’t always bloody. Most days it just felt like living.

They went into town, spoke with school children and smiled real pretty while machine guns were strapped across their chests.

Bucky would skype Steve. They laughed and called each other names and told each other just how much they were missed. He always felt a little worse after. He missed home that much more.

The Commandos just marched on and on, pretending life was normal. One day, they were rich college kids studying abroad. The next, they were from an elite family who traveled around the world.

They’d pretend and pretend until there was an ambush and war called to them once more.

***

**Home.**

Steve did not handle it well. The loneliness. The uncertainty between calls. The finality of a letter.

There was a sour ache in his stomach that didn’t go away the entire time Bucky was gone.

There was no Bucky to complain to after a long day. There was no drumming keeping him up past one or obnoxious television shows that played too loud or bandmates who walked in and out of the apartment as they pleased.

Steve carried that tiny blue turtle with him everywhere he went. He had it in his backpack when he went to work, in his back pocket when he putzed around the apartment and grasped in his hands when he tried to sleep at night. It was never out of his sight. The two times he’d left it at home when he left for work, he rushed back in a panic, thinking somehow that dinky toy was the only thing keeping Bucky alive.

Peggy and Angie were over a lot or Steve was at theirs. They saw the black bags that sat beneath his eyes and the sag in his shoulders. They’d attempt to cheer him up by bringing him to the movies, art galleries, the park, and concerts. They stopped trying after a while when he wouldn’t return their calls.

Natasha, to Steve’s surprise, came over the most often.

The first time, she knocked on his door thrice and waved a bottle of wine after he opened the door. 

Steve crumbled into her arms and sobbed.

“I can’t do it anymore, Nat,” he confessed as she cradled his head against her shoulder, “I just want him home.”

She didn’t tell him not to worry. She never promised it would be okay. She only brought him inside, sat him on the couch and drank with him until he was warm and all his troubles were smoothed over.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this hard,” Steve slurred, holding up his glass for a refill.

Natasha filled it calmly and asked, “And how exactly was it supposed to be, Steve?”

Steve laughed in place of an answer and chugged the rest of the wine from his glass. 

He missed a lot of work that year. At first, he’d sob at night when he thought no one could hear him, but the neighbors started pounding on the walls.

Then, he drew. He drew pictures of that booth in Coney Island and his father’s uniform and what he believed Bucky’s mother looked like.

He mostly drew Bucky. The dimple in his chin. The twist of his front tooth. The glint in his clear blue eyes.

He drew and drew until one night he stopped and realized it wasn’t Bucky he was drawing anymore. It wasn’t Bucky because he couldn’t remember his face too well.

**

It ended with a phone call. Bucky’s brigade was in an accident. There wasn’t much they could do. Most of the others were gone. Blown to little pieces. They did what they could do to save Bucky, and it worked, but his left arm—

His left arm didn’t make it.

_Yes, Mr. Rogers, he's alive. No, Mr. Rogers, you can’t see him. He won’t be cleared for a few months yet._

It ended and it started again.

***

**June 9, 2019**

_Shatter._

“My dad could never shake it, either,” Steve mutters in the kitchen, thumbing his engagement ring instead of the rim of his wine glass.

Natasha circles her glass with her thumb, watching Steve watch Bucky watch _Family Guy_ with Clint in the living room.

Clint and Bucky are a little drunk, laughing at scenes that aren’t funny and jokes shared between them since childhood. It’s the most Steve seen Bucky smile for God knows how long, but it’s a hollow thing. All teeth and red cheeks but with no shine in his eyes. Every time Clint looks away, the smile drops.

Steve takes a deep breath and brings his eyes back toward his glass, “‘Least that’s what my mom told me.”

It’s the first time Clint and Nat have been over since Bucky came home. They didn’t get to see his hair when it was clean-cut and his face freshly shaved because he let it get shaggy. The didn’t get to see the pristine uniform or the Purple Heart pinned to his lapel. 

Steve brought up the idea of them coming often because he thought that maybe then Bucky would get out of bed and go to the living room to do something besides watch the walls. Maybe then he’d wake up from this slump and he’d listen to music and do laundry and laugh at bad jokes and love Steve again.

Bucky rejected it for a while until Steve asked through a mouthful of cornflakes that morning. Bucky finally snapped and said they could come if Steve would just shut up and let the house be quiet for one fucking minute.

“How has he been besides that? Has he come to your class at all?” Natasha inquires, raising her eyebrows and then her glass to her lips to take a slow, calculating sip. The wine is cheap, the boxed stuff, and too bitter. At least it keeps them warm and their chests light.

Steve shakes his head, eyes still on the light reflecting off the top of his deep red wine. His lips purse together like he ate something sour.

“He doesn’t really…do anything.” Steve shrugs and gulps his wine. His whole face pinches and he puts the glass on the counter behind him.

“Are you guys having sex?” Natasha asks casually.

Steve chokes a bitter laugh and says, “Nat, he can barely look at me most days. If I talk he either yells or acts like he never heard me. Sex is the last thing we need. Last thing he needs.”

Natasha shrugs and swirls her finger over the rim of her glass again so it sings. It meshes with the raucous voices of the childish cartoon that Bucky doesn’t even like playing in the living room.

“It helps, you know. It’s one of the things they’ll ask you about in couples’ therapy,” Natasha notes.

Steve snorts, “Yeah, as if Bucky would ever agree to couples’ therapy. He doesn’t want to go anywhere with me. Jesus, it’s like,” 

Steve runs a hand through his hair and the top sticks up. He drops his voice to a hiss incase Bucky could hear them over the loud as fuck cartoon that seemed to only be getting louder, “It’s like he doesn’t even care, Nat. About anything. I don’t even know what to do anymore. It’s like he died over there and all I got was the corpse. What kind of sick joke is that?”

God, Steve could go for a smoke. Or another glass of wine on top of the one he has yet to finish. It’s just that his stomach hurts now. It got all twisted up and won’t stop spinning.

Natasha puts her glass down gently and it doesn’t make a noise. She leans forward, just so, and rests a hand on Steve’s shoulder. He looks up into her eyes. They’re stern like his mother’s whenever he talked himself down. 

“That’s war, Steve,” Natasha says. “That’s just war. They’ll come back but you’re still left mourning someone who’s sitting in your living room.” 

Natasha drops her hand and picks up her glass. She holds it to her lips and peers inside instead of looking at Steve. She speaks quietly, “My dad didn’t shake it either.”

**

Bucky feels warm at the end of the night. His laugh sounds like squeaking barks from a rabid dog and there are tears in his eyes. He feels nauseous. His head’s starting to hurt. He wishes Natasha and Clint never fucking came. He didn’t want them to come in the first place. He slams the door a little too hard when they leave.

Steve’s cleaning in the kitchen, making an awful lot of noise while he’s doing it. Spoons hitting metal pots, the scrubber screeching against a grimy spatula, plates clapping as they’re put roughly in the dishwasher.

They’re not normal now. Steve can pretend all he wants, but they’re not normal. And they’re not in love the way they used to be.

It’s times like this where Bucky thinks he hates Steve. Like times where Steve sits too close to him on the couch and turns on the T.V. after Bucky went out there just for a bit of silence or when he pesters Bucky into taking a shower because he stinks to high heaven but that would require standing in the slick shower with a curtain that hid everything in the bathroom and what if someone snuck inside and placed a landmine right under the bath mat and Bucky, buck-ass-naked, planted his foot right on top of it and exploded into a thousand pieces?

Does Steve think about that? Does he consider it at all? Or is he too busy making the pots and forks screech together because his boney fingers can’t seem to get the crust off any of their dishes without making a ruckus?

Bucky puts a palm over his right ear and shuts his eyes and squeezes. Squeezes until that ear is filled with the ocean that comes with the pound of his heart. He wishes he could cover both, but that’s impossible now unless he rams the left side of his head into the wall. He feels awfully warm. He feels awfully dizzy. He might vomit.

“Did you and Clint—”

“Shut up,” Bucky wheezes, pulling the hand from his ear and holding it up towards Steve. He hunches over because his stomach is cramping up. He doesn’t feel good. This might not be the booze. This might be his head. Or his heart. He can’t tell. 

“Shut up, okay?” he hisses, “Just shut up. I can’t hear another fucking word tonight, Steve, or I swear to God, I’ll lose my mind.”

His words sound foggy in his ears like he’s underwater. His phantom arm aches something awful. It always does, so it shouldn’t even bother him but it does. 

“Buck—”

_“Shut up!”_

Then, the glass shatters.

Bucky drops his hand, drags his eyes to Steve, and freezes.

There’s glass sitting heavy at the bottom of the sink. Some big shards and other tiny, fingernail-sized fragments. They’re from a mug Bucky gave Steve the first Christmas they spent together.

Steve’s standing by the sink, hands grasping the counter. His chest is heaving something awful but it’s not asthma.

“I’m trying,” Steve seethes through clenched teeth, the last word rattling out like a provoked viper, “I’m trying to help you. I’m trying so. Fucking. Hard, but it’s like you’re not even here!”

Bucky stands upright and blinks. The dizziness has subsided with his anger but his stomach is still in knots.

“I mean, you’re here,” Steve continues, waving his hand at Bucky with a wry smile and a dry exhale like this was somehow amusing, “but you’re not here and I just…” he shakes his head, closes his eyes and admits, “I don’t know what to do.”

There’s a soft clicking from the clock in the kitchen. Steve’s still breathing hard. He’s looking at the glass in the sink.

Bucky worries, for the first time in a long time, about the strain this is putting on Steve’s lungs.

“I’m not trying to be a burden, Stevie. I’m not,” he admits in a whisper. He can’t bring himself to speak much louder than that.

Steve snorts wryly at the once affectionate nickname.

His eyes are red when storms out of the kitchen and shoves past Bucky, his boney shoulder hitting Bucky’s chest and leaving a sharp pain. He goes to their room and slams the door.

All it takes is a few seconds and Bucky can hear him crying through the walls. There’s a sharp slam of the bathroom door and the shower starts and now Bucky can’t hear him at all.

Bucky sinks to the floor and puts his head between his legs. Then, he presses his one palm to his right ear and puts his left ear against his knee so the sound of the ocean can drown him.

He doesn’t know how long he’s there. The shower clinks off in the bathroom and the doors slam once more.

Eventually, Bucky rises. His chest hurts and his body is shaking, but he goes to the kitchen to clean the glass from the sink.

***

**December 24, 2018.**

_War._

A bomb whistled above like fireworks.

Bucky held his breath and tapped the trigger, one, two, three times. Wilson kneed him in the stomach. Falsworth pressed heavily against his side. They were squashed like sardines inside that muddy trench. They stunk to high heaven and their stomachs cramped, deprived of a decent meal for days.

Bucky’s eyes stung like hell and his lungs felt rubbed on with steel wool.

Men screamed. Bullets popped across the dirt. At least one man near his trench didn’t make it.

“What’s the plan, Sarge?” Wilson yelled over the shrieks and pops. His eyes were half-closed, filled with dust and smoke. He looked ready to jump out of the trench and take down every enemy himself.

“Stay down, Wilson!” Bucky yelled back, voice seeping with paralyzing fear. He tapped the trigger again, “You hear me? You stay the fuck down!”

“What the fuck do you think I’m doing?”

“Now would be a great time for that plan, Sarge!” Dugan yelled three people over.

“I fucking know!” Bucky snapped, tapping the trigger once more. He couldn’t see a goddamn thing. There wasn’t a source. What if he hit one of his own? What if there was a kid? What if he shot someone who was just as terrified as he was?

_What am I doing here?_ he thought, blinking as he aligned the barrel with the target. _I don’t want to be here. I don’t even want to go to college._

He inhaled shakenly through his nose and it whistled like the bombs above.

Then, he pulled the trigger.

**

There was always a silence once these things were over. Birds don’t make a sound. There’s no rustle in the leaves. No movement in the dirt.

He doesn’t remember how long they stayed crouched down there. They got the clear maybe minutes—maybe hours—before. No one had worked up the stomach to stand yet.

He doesn’t remember how they got out. Memories are staticky, pieced together all wrong like a first grader let loose with glue and paper. He remembers lying on his belly, rifle in his hands and dirt in his nose, his mouth, his skin. Then, he remembers walking.

They lined up and marched with their shoulders back and eyes darting around wherever they could. Their steps were silent even with their steel-toed boots.

Wilson led the way. Bucky kept watch in the back.

He remembers looking around. The ungodly heat. How the sun was bright and furious overhead. How the skin on his face turned redder. How the pack weighed heavier on his shoulders. He remembers the chafing from his uniform on the insides of his thighs and down his back; the way Wilson walked with his head held high like he was sure he’d see tomorrow.

All it took was one misplaced step and the world turned red.

**

Bucky came to from guttural howls and pain so excruciating it zapped through his core but started in his left elbow. The youngest of his unit, barely eighteen, was shrieking and twisting beside him. His face was painted red and so was his stomach except his stomach was torn up and so were his legs and Bucky’s arm burned like someone shoved a hot rod right through his humerus after they ripped off his skin.

He couldn’t focus on the pain for very long. Beside him laid pieces of his friends.

***

**June 9, 2019.**

_Nearing midnight._

Crickets don’t chirp in the city. That was something Bucky took too long to get used to.

He snuck out onto the fire escape while Steve was raging in the bedroom. It feels nice to breathe the outside air, to feel the wind on his cheeks and how it ruffles his hair. The air smells smoggy, but it’s the sweetest thing he’s smelt in months.

Nights that weren’t so long ago but now feel so distant Bucky has a hard time remembering if they even happened, he and Steve would sit out here to just get some air. Steve would sit between Bucky’s legs or Bucky would lay his head in Steve’s lap. And they’d breathe.

Bucky looks up at the barren sky. The only light it holds comes from smog and light pollution from the biggest skyscrapers in the country.

He wants nothing more than to see the stars. Ma used to take him and Becca through the corn and lay down a checkered blanket on a patch of dirt.

_“Do you see it, baby?”_ she’d ask them both, _“That one’s Orion’s Belt. And that dull star sitting at the bottom? That’s Betelgeuse, that poor dying thing.”_

That’s what Bucky misses. It was a slow coming realization, but he misses that dying star. He never felt so linked to anything in the universe as he did that star.

The window shrieks open behind him, and what a sight Steve will see.

Bucky with his hair a tangled mess and tear stains on his cheeks. He didn’t have the strength to lift his arm to wipe them away, so here they sit. Dry, shameful, trails of tears.

Steve shuffles on his knees and settles down when he’s next to Bucky. Their thighs press together, but they both continue to stare at the blur of lights ahead.

“Hey,” Steve whispers.

“Hey yourself,” Bucky whispers back, dull eyes blinking towards the dirty sky.

Steve sighs like he’s ready to lose a fight. Then, he turns towards Bucky.

“I shouldn’t have blown up like that,” Steve admits. He runs his slender fingers through Bucky’s hair and tucks a strand behind his ear, “It was childish. I just—”

Bucky still looks up at the murky sky. He doesn’t finish Steve’s sentence. He doesn’t tell him to hurry up. He leans a little into Steve’s touch.

Steve swallows and shuffles closer. His voice is wet when he finishes, “I just miss you.”

“I’ve been here, honey,” Bucky whispers back. His forehead wrinkles with uncertainty. 

“No, Buck,” Steve states, simple as anything, “You haven’t.”

It’s that; those four simple words, that cuts something painful in Bucky’s stomach.

“I don’t mean to be so mean, Stevie,” Bucky confesses wetly, pushing greasy strands of hair away from his face, “I don’t mean to. It’s just…”

He laughs at nothing funny, shakes his head and looks down at the grates in their fire escape.

Steve sits there as still as a statue. He doesn’t move his arms in fear that they will creak and rip the fragile atmosphere of this moment to shreds. He fears that he’ll never get this moment back.

Bucky shakes his head and inhales through his nose. He looks at Steve with wet, earnest eyes and hisses, “I can’t _sleep_, honey.” 

And it breaks.

Bucky covers his eyes with his one hand and sobs; raw, heart-aching sobs that pierce the New York skyline.

A couple of windows away, a neighbor screams at him to shut up.

Steve doesn’t hear that. He doesn’t hear the not-there crickets or the screeching traffic below. He just scooches forward on his knees and wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders.

“It’s okay, Buck,” Steve promises. Bucky crumbles with a choked sob and puts his head in Steve’s lap. Steve carefully runs his fingers over Bucky’s hair as if it were made from cotton candy.

“You don’t have to explain it now,” Steve continues in a whisper, bending to press a firm kiss to Bucky’s head, “It’s okay.”

They stay like this for a few moments. Bucky crying. Steve carding his fingers through Buck’s hair. The city refusing to sleep.

“You don’t have to stay for me, baby,” Bucky insists when he’s calmed down. His face is still hidden in Steve’s thigh.

Steve’s fingers falter in Bucky’s hair. He peers over to try and look at his face.

“Buck?” Steve asks because he knows that Bucky’s not talking about the fire escape.

“If something better comes along, you go,” Bucky continues, moving his head so he can be heard more clearly, “You promise me, Steve. I won’t be a charity case. You leave if you have to, okay?”

Steve’s brain can’t process it for a moment. These words have too much depth to reach into right now. Not here. Not on this fire escape. Not when he’s holding Bucky closer than he has in months.

Steve takes one deep, shuddering breath and says, “I’m going to stay for you. I always will. I just need you to try.”

Bucky sniffs and turns his head, looking up to Steve. The crease between his eyebrows pinches as he asks, “Try?”

Steve smiles softly and says, “Just take your pills. I’ll call the VA to see if I can get you another appointment, okay? Would you go if I did that?”

Bucky blinks once. Then slowly, like he was moving through water, he pushes himself to sit up straight. 

Before Steve can see it coming, Bucky leans forward and presses his lips to Steve’s. His lips are rough, chewed, and salty but the kiss is soft.

Steve grabs his face and kisses back with fervor. Bucky continues in kind, knocking Steve off balance so his back hits the grated bottom of the fire escape.

Steve doesn’t mind in the slightest. It’s nice.

And this, Steve foolishly thinks, is the confirmation he was looking for.

***

**July 23, 2017**

The vent whirring and the scissors snipping were the only noises the night before Bucky reported for basic.

Bucky sat on their wobbly step stool but he kept his feet sturdy on the ground so it wouldn’t tip. A stained towel hung around his neck.

Steve stood behind him, eyebrows furrowed and tongue caught between his teeth. He carefully lifted strands of Bucky’s hair and clipped them away.

Bucky watched Steve in the mirror, taking in every twitch of his lip and wrinkle of his nose.

Bucky could never sit in silence for too long, so he broke it with, “Can’t believe they’re making me cut my hair. How the hell are the kids supposed to braid it now?”

“Quit it, Buck. I’m concentrating,” Steve scolded, but it was too light-hearted to mean anything.

“I’m serious, Stevie!” Bucky laughed and tilted the chair. This caused the scissors to jolt a little too close to his ear.

Steve yelped and pulled them away from Bucky’s head. Bucky just laughed harder, full-on guffawing now. His chair tilted so far forward that it might’ve only been the hand of God holding him up.

Steve huffed, tossed the scissors on the counter and glared at Bucky through the mirror.

“It’s not funny, asshole. I could’ve cut your whole damn ear off,” Steve stood on his toes to get a better look at the damage before he threw his hands up and yelled, “and now it's lopsided!”

“I don’t give a shit about my hair, baby.” Bucky giggled and wiped at his eyes. “Grows back, doesn’t it?”

“You were just whining about it ten seconds ago!” Steve cried. When Bucky kept on chuckling, Steve gave up and slumped against the counter, “God, just forget it. You wanna look bad going off tomorrow? That’s just fine.”

Bucky calmed himself down quickly. His grin turned to a confused frown. He stood up from the stool and wrapped his arms around Steve’s waist and asked, “Hon, what’s wrong? It’s just hair, Stevie. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings or anything.”

Steve groaned and shoved his way out of Bucky’s arms. He snatched the stool off the ground to take back to the kitchen, but Bucky’s grabbed his wrist to stop him.

“Really, Steve. What’s wrong?”

“I just,” Steve started, and then scoffed and shook his head. “I just wanted to do something nice. One last nice thing before you left. I couldn’t take you out to dinner or get you a gift so all I had was this. And it’s all fucked up,” he peered back up at Bucky. “You really should see your hair, Buck, it looks ridiculous.”

“Jeez, aren’t you the charmer?” Bucky scoffed, rubbing a self-conscious hand over his hair. Then, he dropped it and put it on Steve’s shoulder, “I don’t need anything fancy tonight Steve. I just wanted to spend it with you. Right? Wasn’t that the plan? I don’t need fancy dinners or gifts. I just want you. And I swear if you get all mopey on me when we watch _Austin Powers_, I’m making you sleep on the goddamn couch.”

Steve blushed and half-heartedly pushed Bucky’s hand away. He looked at the ground and stubbornly muttered, “I should be going with you.”

Bucky closed his eyes and sighed through his nose. He wasn’t about to have the same argument he had with Steve a hundred times before. An argument over something neither of them could change.

When he blinked his eyes back open, he knuckled under Steve’s chin. Steve looked back up, eyes slanted, stubborn and pissed.

“You’re not going,” Bucky reaffirmed.

Steve’s eyes sparked and he opened his mouth to say something but Bucky just lifted a finger for him to wait.

“You’re not going. But you know what?” he waited for Steve to huff and shrug before he continued, “You’re staying here and you’re being the best damn teacher to your students. You’re going to see our friends every week. You’re going to eat great food whenever you want because I’m not gonna be here to eat out the entire fridge. You’re going to watch our shows and all the movies we would’ve seen together and you’re gonna tell me everything when I get back. And you know what I’m gonna do?”

The red in Steve’s cheeks faded as did the fight in his eyes. He blinked once and shrugged again.

“I’m just gonna miss you,” Bucky said.

A beat later, tiny arms that were strong as a rope wrapped around Bucky’s neck and there were chapped, thin lips against his.

Bucky wrapped his arms around Steve’s waist and pulled him closer.

When they broke for a moment to catch their breath, Bucky rubbed his hands on Steve’s back.

Steve pressed his face into Bucky’s shoulder and confessed, “I don’t want you to go.”

“Twelve weeks,” Bucky promised and pressed a firm kiss on Steve’s temple, “twelve weeks and then I’m all yours again.”

“For how long?” Steve croaked, not lifting his head, “they’re just gonna take you away again. And that’ll be a real war they’ll take you to.”

“Don’t worry about that, baby,” Bucky placated then kissed him again, “I’ll always come back. They can’t kill me no matter how hard they try. Don’t worry. They’re not taking me from you.”

Steve huffed wetly into Bucky’s neck. Bucky laughed in return and kissed him again. Then, he leaned his cheek against Steve’s soft hair and breathed. They both just stood with each other and breathed.

How he wished these tranquil times could last an eternity. But they were, in truth, the shortest.

***

**The Summer of 2019**

Bucky promised. But Bucky can’t shake it.

Steve convinced himself for a while that he was doing better.

Bucky brushes his teeth on most days. He usually gets out of bed before noon. He lets Steve take him to the VA twice. He even sat in on one group therapy session.

Steve keeps the room clean and Bucky tends to eat in the dining room. Sometimes he’ll sit in the kitchen while Steve makes dinner. Once while Steve was stirring spaghetti, Bucky sprung up, kissed Steve on the cheek and told him that he loved him.

Steve grinned and batted him away with the wooden spoon. His face turned red and his stomach felt warm for the rest of the night.

Bucky throws away his trash most of the time. When he doesn’t, Steve smiles good-naturedly and collects it for him.

Sometimes Bucky goes outside. He goes for a handful of grocery store trips and one walk through the park with Steve. His pale, clammy skin gains some life again. There’s color in his cheeks and the fog dissipates from his eyes.

Steve even gets him to come to visit his class.

“You don’t have to,” Steve insists when he sees Bucky’s trembling hand, “don’t force yourself to do it.”

“I want to,” Bucky wheezes. He wipes his hand on his pants and asks, “but what if they say something about my arm?”

It’s a mistake in the end. None of them say a thing about Bucky’s arm. That doesn’t mean it was a good idea.

Steve wrings his hands on the subway ride and Bucky looks like he’ll vomit.

“They miss you,” Steve states, “they ask about you every day.”

“Okay,” Bucky nods, but it only makes him panic more.

“Mr. Bucky!” the kids cheer when the couple walks through the door. The smaller ones jump and the older ones grin because no one can forget the charming Mr. Barnes. 

Only this isn’t him. He doesn’t smile, doesn’t ruffle the kids’ hair or swoop them up. He doesn’t joke about them getting taller or fawn over their artwork.

Instead, he backs away towards the door.

A child jumps up from her seat to run over and greet him, as she would a year ago.

Back then, Bucky wouldn’t even flinch before hefting up the little rugrat and spinning her around. Now, he retreats like he’s being thrown a bomb.

He presses against the door, holds his hand out and snaps, “Don’t just run at me, okay? Don’t ever run up at adults.”

The little girl’s face crumbles as she halts in her steps. When the tears start falling, Steve’s stomach cramps like he’s going to vomit.

When they get back home, Bucky makes Steve promise to never bring him back there. Steve shakingly gives him his word.

**

It’s a sticky summer night when Bucky says it. 

Steve’s laying with his head rested against Bucky’s stomach. It rises and falls as Bucky breathes; up and down and up and down. 

Dust sprinkles around them. It dances through the air, illuminated by moonlight. 

Steve’s about to fall asleep. His eyes are closed, his thoughts are clear, his limbs don’t ache. 

“We were meant to do better things,” Bucky hisses through the dark, “to be better people.” 

Steve’s eyes snap open. Something terrible rushes through and freezes his veins. He doesn’t look at Bucky when he whispers, “Buck?” 

Bucky keeps his eyes at the ceiling. He finishes with, “But that didn’t happen and we’re just going to have to be okay with that.” 

**

Bucky can’t shake it.

Soon, he doesn’t feel hungry. He finds it hard to get out of bed. He tells Steve that’s where he’s safe, under those covers with a blanket pulled over his head.

At some point, Steve can’t count the days between Bucky’s showers. At some point, he gets the call from the VA wondering when Bucky will come in again.

Steve can only convince himself for so long. There comes a point where the band must break. A point where Steve opens his eyes and sees that this apartment is no place for Bucky to heal.

It comes during a late dinner. Steve’s preparing mashed potatoes. Bucky’s sitting on the couch with a blanket over his head.

Steve had a bad day at work. His fingers ache as he washes dishes from the week that he hadn’t had the chance to clean yet.

He switches on the tap and the sound of running water floods the usual silence that fills the apartment.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve calls out with a hoarse voice. He seems to be coming down with the flu. As a child, he fell ill more often when he was tired, “Can you come here?”

He asks like it isn’t a lost cause. Like Bucky hasn’t been ignoring him for days because he’s found it hard to speak again.

Steve doesn’t even really know why he’s calling him; to help with dinner? To see when he wanted to eat? To talk with him about his day?

He can’t admit the obvious. He stubbornly strives forward and convinces himself that this is working. They’re making it work. They’re getting by just fine, just as they always had.

But he, like always, is met with no response.

“Bucky!” he calls out louder.

He grabs the sponge from the murky water building in the sink and pumps soap onto it. He grabs a knife, one he’ll need for the potatoes, and soaps it up.

“Bucky!” he calls again, shriller. He wipes his wrist across his head to wipe up cold sweat.

Something doesn’t feel right.

He twists over his shoulder to look at Bucky’s stiff shoulders above the back of the couch.

“Jesus, are you deaf? I need a little help,” Steve snaps and turns back to the sink. A tight knot has grown in his stomach.

He bites his lip hard and thinks _stupid, stupid, stupid!_ Why the fuck did he talk to him that way? Snapping like that is probably why Bucky won’t answer him in the first place. 

Steve turns around again to apologize and nearly jumps at the sight of Bucky looking back at him.

His expression is blank. His lips are white. His eyes hold something though; a small, pleading cry that’s trapped inside them.

Words dry to dust in Steve’s throat.

They are hollow shells of people they were. Steve’s never seen war, yet he’s not who he was before it. 

Bucky does not heal in this place. Bucky’s not Bucky here.

Bucky wants to be let go of.

And Steve must relent.

The soapy knife slips from his hand and crashes into the sink with a sharp clank. The water gushes from the tap. The murky water rises.

Steve folds over and grips the sink with rough hands. And like the world’s been ripped through him and left him raw, he sobs.

Because he sees now that it’s over.

It’s over.

There’s nothing more he can do.

***

**September 18, 2019**

Steve calls off the engagement. He sets the ring on the counter and doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t cry. Neither does Bucky.

It’s odd how something so small can sound like a bomb when it’s dropped onto the counter at eight in the morning.

***

**November 9, 2017.**

_One week before Bucky’s shipped off._

Bucky always thought that Steve looked the cutest like this; sitting on the couch, dressed in his worn pajamas, pencil between his teeth, his lesson plan cradled in his lap as _The Simpsons_ played on the T.V. 

Bucky liked to watch him from the kitchen while he leaned against the counter and sipped on _Coors Light_. That night, though, he didn’t run his fingers over the neck of the bottle. Instead, he thumbed a small, velvet box.

It was rougher than it should have been. “Well-loved” was what the pawnshop owner called it.

Bucky bought it more than a month ago, before he went to basic training. He knew deep in his gut that Steve was the only person for him, the only one that would matter. The only thing that stopped him from popping the question sooner was his nerves.

What if Steve said no? What if he thought they hadn’t been together long enough yet? What if he thought there’d be no point because Bucky might not come back?

Bucky’s mother might have agreed. _You don’t rush into these things, James._ she might have said, _You gotta wait it out. Wait for it to mature, like fine wine or cheese. Never does any good to rush into it. Look at where that got me._

He did wish, more than a lot of things, that he could call her. Not that he needed to anymore. He had Steve. Steve was the only person he ever needed to talk to again. Not the band, not the guys at the shop, not even the fucking unit he’d get assigned to the next week.

It was only ever Steve.

That’s where his mom’s fate and his diverged. Bucky was going to marry the person he loved.

“Do kids still like making houses out of popsicle sticks?” Steve asked from the couch. He stretched one arm above his head and scratched at his hair. He stuck the eraser side of the pencil in his mouth to chew on while he thought.

“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky called from the kitchen, still thumbing and staring at the velvet box.

“Hm?” Steve grunted, not looking up from his lesson plans.

“What do you think about getting married?”

“Depends,” Steve mumbled around the pencil in his mouth, “who’s wearing the dress?”

Bucky scoffed and rolled his eyes. He pushed himself away from the counter and strode into the living room, right up to the couch where Steve was stressing.

Steve didn’t spare him a glance even as Bucky knelt and rested his torso against Steve’s knobby knees.

Bucky’s left fist held the box behind his back. He rubbed Steve’s thigh with his right hand.

“What do you want, Barnes?” Steve asked, plucking the pencil from his mouth to scribble another project idea down.

Bucky put his right arm across Steve’s lesson plan and said softly, “Look at me for a second, honey.” 

Steve glanced at him, a little annoyed at the interruption. Purple bags swooped under both of his eyes. He was tired a lot these days, working to the bone for shit pay. And with the weight of what was to come in the next few weeks, neither of them had been blessed with much sleep.

“I’m working, Buck,” Steve grumbled, but made no move to shoo Bucky away. He rested his right hand with boney fingers and chewed nails on top of Bucky’s and rubbed his knuckles. “You’re always distracting me when I got work to do.”

“This is important, baby. Look,” Bucky brought his left hand forward and opened his palm, revealing the matted velvet box.

Steve stiffened and stared at the box with bugged eyes. He slowly pulled his hand away and sat up straight as if he were attending an etiquette class. His eyes darted from Bucky’s face to his palm and back.

Finally, his face hardened as he raised a single, slender finger and hissed, “That better not be a—”

Bucky smiled sheepishly, using his right hand to pop the box open and reveal the slender ring that adorned the world’s smallest diamond.

“Don’t make me return it, Stevie. Delmar said no refunds.”

Steve scoffed half-heartedly. He rubbed his palm against his forehead and muttered, “Of course you got it from fucking Delmar. How much did he make you pay for that?”

Bucky’s smile grew boyish as he shrugged. “Enough.”

Steve shot him an unamused glare before dropping his eyes back down to the ring. With nimble fingers, he slowly reached out and touched it.

“It sure is pretty,” he murmured, “I’ll give you that.”

“Hey,” Bucky whispered and ran his knuckles under Steve’s chin. Once Steve looked up, Bucky continued softly, “I know we don’t have a lot of time now, doll face, but I’ll make us a pair of honest men when I get back.”

Steve scoffed once more and said, “Don’t make promises you can’t keep because I’m holding you to that one.”

Before Bucky could think of a reply, Steve grabbed his face between his palms and kissed him.

And kissed him.

And kissed him.

***

**September 20, 2019**

_This isn’t a goodbye,_ Steve tries to rationalize, _it’s a ‘see you later’._

But as the apartment lays half bare, it becomes harder and harder to believe that.

Where Bucky’s science fiction books sat on the bookshelf are now spots of wood that hold no dust. Where his drums sat in the corner now sit boxes filled with his clothes, his books, his pans from the kitchen.

There are hunks he’s taken out everywhere. From the living room to the bathroom. There were lamps and picture frames and an extra cell phone charger. Now, it’s empty, hollow, unlived.

Steve feels like a ghost as he passes through the apartment once more. Bucky’s just as much of one where he’s seated on the couch.

Steve can barely stand to look at him.

Bucky’s head is tilted to the side like he hasn’t found the strength to hold it upright. His eyes are open and they look mad even though Steve’s the only one here who should be angry.

Steve; the one who had plans. The one who was excited to get Bucky back home after months of his stomach getting torn to shreds just waiting to hear from his fiancé.

They were supposed to get married, have kids, grow old and grey and not care that they couldn’t move the way they used to because they had each other.

It was a stupid dream when Steve thinks about it. A selfish one. How could he be so blind to not see that war changes people? It mars their heart until you can’t believe they’re your honey when they get home.

Steve looks back at Bucky and notices something funny clasped in Bucky’s grip.

The tiny blue turtle.

Steve’s anger cracks. His shoulders droop and his arms hang limply at his sides. He numbly walks to the back of the couch, behind where Bucky’s sitting and leans against it. He wraps his arms around Bucky’s chest and leans his temple against Bucky’s hair.

Bucky presses a firm kiss to Steve’s bicep, but he doesn't turn around.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Bucky recites hollowly.

“Not your fault,” Steve recites back. He lets his fingers fall towards Bucky’s hand that grasps the turtle. They dance above its blue shell when he says, “I won’t blame you for something you can’t control. You know that, right?”

Bucky hums. His eyes drop to Steve’s hand and the blue turtle.

“Ma says clean air’s gonna be good for me,” he mumbles.

“I believe that,” Steve responds and turns toward the clock on the microwave, “she should be here in about an hour.”

They went to the VA last week. Steve told Bucky’s therapist what was happening. The therapist suggested that Bucky should heal somewhere else, perhaps with family. Once he feels better, maybe he can come back and the two of them could work things out again.

Steve called Bucky’s mother after they came home. She enthusiastically agreed with the therapist. She got a room set up that night and worked out a day to pick her son up and take him home.

“The VA’s letting me do Skype sessions for free,” Bucky continues, glancing over at Steve, “but I don’t have a laptop.”

“I gave you mine, Buck,” Steve reminds him, “I set it up for you already.”

Bucky hums again instead of answering and looks back down at his hand.

“Hey,” Bucky says, “can I bring this with me?”

In his dry, red fingers, he holds up the turtle. It’s beady eyes and sewn stiff smile look right through Steve.

Steve barks a laugh and says, “I thought you hated that thing.”

Bucky shrugs, lips quirking when he drops his hand back to his lap, “I guess it’s growing on me. Not completely, though. It’s still a blue turtle.”

“You can bring it,” Steve nods, and clasps his hands over Bucky’s, “as long as you promise you’ll bring it back.”

“Of course, hon,” Bucky states and turns his hand so he can lace his fingers with Steve’s. The turtle is squished between their palms, “I’m with you until the end. You know that.”

Steve closes his eyes and drops his head onto the top of the couch.

“‘Til the end,” Steve affirms.

Bucky gives his hand one last squeeze before he lets go.

**

Bucky’s ma comes before long. She’s pleasant. Her hand is limp when she shakes Steve’s. Her lips are thin but her smile seems real. There’s a shallow pool of sorrow that creeps into her eyes when she spots her son’s missing arm.

“Thank you for taking care of him,” she says while she and Steve load up her car with Bucky’s belongings, “he was a lot different as a boy. Happier.”

Steve shrugs and keeps his focus on his task so he doesn’t tell her that he was a lot happier last year, too. He was happiest when he and Steve loved each other fully and it peaked when he put that ring on Steve’s finger.

They finish loading the car quicker than Steve wanted them to. Buck stayed inside and sat on the couch, only getting up when Steve came to collect him.

He walks with him down the grimy staircase that smells like ripe garbage and through the metal door that opens to the busy New York streets. They both have their hands, or hand, in their pockets and their eyes on the floor.

Steve walks Bucky to the car and says nothing as Bucky climbs in and buckles up.

“I’ll see you soon, right?” Steve asks, leaning as close as he dares through the passenger side. His hands are slick as he grips the car door. His eyes are wide and worried, but hope can be found on the surface.

Bucky nods stiffly as his mother crawls into the driver’s side.

“Thanks again for your help, Steve,” she smiles dismissively before turning towards the wheel to put the key in the ignition.

Steve swallows dryly and gives a wry smile.

“Of course, ma’am. No need to thank me.”

With that, he pushes away from the door and teeters on the sidewalk.

Bucky doesn’t look at Steve when he closes the car door.

The ignition starts like a hoarse gunshot.

Bucky looks at his lap when they drive away.

Steve watches the car zoom as quickly as it can through New York traffic. He steps onto his toes and cranes his neck and watches until it turns a corner and buzzes out of sight.

Like a puppet cut from its strings, he drops flatly onto his feet and blinks.

_Huh._

_That’s it._

His limbs are numb. Hot tears cut down his cheeks.

A sudden gasp scratches through his throat like someone cut it out with rusty scissors.

He’s alone. He’ll have to climb up those stairs alone. He’ll have to go to bed alone. He’ll have to come home from work alone.

Steve’s stomach’s torn. He cups a hand over his mouth and curls an arm around his stomach and gasps again.

Bucky’s gone.

And Steve weeps alone while people push past him on the buzzing New York sidewalk.


	3. epilogue

**June 1, 2020.**

The class is always rowdiest at the end of the year. Or perhaps that’s just when Steve’s run out of steam.

The room is crowded and stuffy. There are five kids to one pair of scissors. Steve had to cut the papers for their project in half just so everyone would get one.

He tries to explain exactly how to fold a paper ‘hotdog’ style to a class of third graders while their teacher sits on her phone in the corner, but the kids won’t stop talking.

Eruptions of giggles, arguments over crayons, and side chatter about television shows or playground games or whatever the fuck third graders talk about are at an all-time high.

“Mr. Rogers!” a little girl yells, cutting Steve off mid-sentence, “Joey won’t give me the purple crayon!”

“Maisy, why do you need a crayon if we’re just folding paper?” Steve questions, still holding the paper he’s demonstrating with up. Only four kids out of thirty are following along.

“Because I want it!”

“Calm down, Maisy,” the teacher grumbles distractedly, her eyes still glued to her phone.

Steve’s about to give out the next instruction when his phone starts vibrating in his pocket. He sighs, placing the paper down while the children grow louder.

He expects it to be a scam call. Those are the only kinds he’d been getting besides the once a month check-in from Peggy and occasional text from Natasha asking if he wanted to get pizza with her and Clint.

Steve almost declines the call as soon as he gets the phone out of his pocket until his eyes catch the area code.

**Call from: Unknown (Shelbyville, Indiana)**

His heart stops.

His first thought is of Mrs. Barnes; her frantic voice telling him that something went wrong. That Bucky got worst. That she can’t find him. That Bucky did something stupid and Steve wouldn’t be able to tell him off for it.

Steve stumbles out a quick, “Keep working, kids,” and leaves the room. 

The door closes with a clank of metal against metal. He falls against it, his shoulder blades pressing painfully into the cold surface.

His thumb shakes as he presses the green button.

“Hello?” he answers, too loud, too quick.

Steve’s expecting it. He’s expecting Mrs. Barnes’ bad news or maybe even Rebecca relaying the message. His heart cramps and aches. He’s expecting it.

“Hey, Stevie,” a forced drawl responds instead, one that was so familiar in a time maybe not so long ago but now sounds like a ghost.

Steve’s throat feels like it’s closing. His head perks up and away from the door.

“Bucky?” he whispers, like if he speaks louder this little, fragile bubble will pop and Bucky won’t speak another word.

A shaky laugh cracks through the speaker. There’s an uncertainty in it.

“Yeah, baby,” Bucky says, “you miss me?”


End file.
